“Here I'd been thinking that just because someone spoke English we'd understand each other. But I guess there are languages within languages, and those can be foreign, too, even when you think you're understanding each other.”

“The more I think about language, the more it amazes me that people ever understand each other at all.”

“It's not entirely absurd to think that somewhere in the past of mankind someone, for the first time, did in his mind the equivalent of putting an adjective to a noun, and saw, not only a relationship, but this special relationship between two things of different kinds....In sum, all the seemingly complicated kinds of modification in English are just ways of thinking and seeing how things go with each other or reflect each other. Modifiers in our language are not aids to understanding relationships; they are the ways to understand relationships. A mistake in this matter either comes from or causes a clouded mind. Usually it's both.”

“Neither the mouse nor the boy was the least bit surprised that each could understand the other. Two creatures who shared a love for motorcycles naturally spoke the same language.”

“You can never tell about a person by guessing...that's why language was invented. Otherwise, we'd all be like dogs, sniffing each other to find out where we stood.”

“I'm a Helian, and you're an Arcan. We're just made that way. I don't think we would ever be able to really understand each other.”