“The poet, however, uses these two crude, primitive, archaic forms of thought (simile and metaphor) in the most uninhibited way, because his job is not to describe nature, but to show you a world completely absorbed and possessed by the human mind.”

“The fundamental difference between civilized and indigenous ways of being is that for even the most open-minded of the civilized, listening to the natural world is a metaphor. For traditional indigenous peoples it is not a metaphor; it is how you relate to the real world.”

“I'll buy metaphor, but simile's a cop-out used by scaredycats who won't commit to anything. Simile's for cowards.”

“For me the most valuable part of this kind of research, however, is just hanging out with the men and women on the job, listening to them, absorbing the atmosphere and attitudes of their world.”

“Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.”

“Metaphors failed him, then. He had gone beyond the world of metaphor and simile into the place of things that are, and it was changing him.”