“Learning a language happens in stages, and the first breakthrough is a limited understanding. Somehow the words began to make sense; I could not respond, yet I had a vague comprehension of what had been said.”

“he could not quite understand what had happened. he began to sense an aura of hitherto unknown happiness emanating from them”

“Living like that utterly convinced me of the extreme limitations of language. I was just a child then, so I had only an intuitive understanding of the degree to which one losses control of words once they are spoken or written. It was then that I first felt a deep curiosity about language, and understood it as a tool that encompasses both a single moment and eternity.”

“If I can learn to understand this language without words, I can learn to understand the world.”

“To get a true sense of the book, I have to spend a few moments inside. I'll glance at the first couple pages, then flip around to somewhere in the middle, see if the language matches me somehow. It's like dating, only with sentences......It could be something as simple yet weirdly potent as a single word (tangerine). We're meant to be, that sentence and me. And when it happens, you just know.”

“I learned to accept my family for who they were and understand that, though they might be limited in certain areas, they all had good qualities that I could appreciate.”