“If someday I make a dictionary of definitions wanting single words to head them, a cherished entry will be "To abridge, expand, or otherwise alter or cause to be altered for the sake of belated improvement, one's own writings in translation.”

“The fairy tale is in a perpetual state of becoming and alteration. To keep to one version or one translation alone is to put robin redbreast in a cage.”

“The hero is the one who goes beyond his ability to improve his skills, until he becomes able to improve, and perhaps even alter, the skills of others.”

“To pray to God is to flatter oneself that with words one can alter nature.”

“When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. 'It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]' (Gen. 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is 'notoriously difficult to translate.' The various attempts we have in English are "helper" or "companion" or the notorious "help meet." Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat...disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing "One day I shall be a help meet?" Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it "sustainer beside him" The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately.”

“I have listened to many tales in my life, and told a few of my own. If this has taught me anything, it is that there aresome occurrences that change the course of things, that make an alteration far beyond their own apparent magnitude. Itis like the throwing of a tiny pebble into a pool, how it makes an ever-expanding circle of ripples, spreading rightacross the water's surface.”