A foreign language can signify a total separation. It can represent, even today, the ferocity of our ignorance.

And yet this Italian project of mine makes me acutely aware of the immense distances between languages. A foreign language can signify a total separation. It can represent, even today, the ferocity of our ignorance. To write in a new language, to penetrate its heart, no technology helps. You can't accelerate the process, you can't abbreviate it. The pace is slow, hesitant, there are no shortcuts. The better I understand the language, the more confusing it is. The closer I get, the farther away. Even today the disconnect between me and Italian remains insuperable. It's taken almost half my life to advance barely a few steps. Just to get this far. 

J. Lahiri, In other words (2014) 91

He did not conceive of love as a nervous interchange

He did not conceive of love as a nervous interchange but as something absolute, out of the scope of thought, beyond himself, matter for a confident outward rather than anxious inward looking. He had sought and was satisfied with a few - he thought final - repositories for his emotions: his mother, country, dog, school, a friend or two, now - crowningly - Lois. Of these he asked only that they should be quiet and positive, not impinged upon, not breaking boundaries from their generous allotment. 

E. Bowen, The last September (1929), 41

Hema felt she'd tricked time; with her twentieth-century knowledge she had travelled back to an earlier epoch

Yes, it might be the era of the kidney transplant in America and a vaccine for polio due to arrive even in India, but here [Ethiopia] Hema felt she'd tricked time; with her twentieth-century knowledge she had travelled back to an earlier epoch. The power filtered down from His Majesty to the Rases, the Dejazmaches, and the letter nobility, and then to the vassals and the peons. Her skills were so rare, so needed for the poorest of the poor, and even at times in the royal palace, that she felt valued. Wasn't that the definition of home? Not where you are from, but where you are wanted?

A. Verghese, Cutting for stone (2009), 79  

Why do so many fans love it?

[Asimov's] Foundation series is much beloved by many SF fans, although it suffers from a ubiquitous and debilitating dryness of tone. It is almost entirely composed of dialogue, often of an expository or explicatory nature; there is little description, a fact which renders the sequence visually inert; and the characterisation is rudimentary. Why do so many fans love it?

A. Roberts, The history of Science Fiction (2005), 197

I love it. It's proper grand concept Science Fiction, though the maths is all wrong. 

[Tinsel] possessed all the qualities of silver plus one more – pathos

Flaubert once said that he liked tinsel better than silver  because it possessed all the qualities of silver plus one more – pathos. … Of all the pulps, SF pulp is the most tinselly: partly in the sense that its content was more dazzling, starry, most likely to lift its readers’ eyes, metaphorically, to the brilliances above us; but partly also in the sense that it was aware and even revelled in its own cheapness.

A. Roberts, The history of Science Fiction (2005), 175

My nose lost track of honey and citrus, but still held a wisp of cool, clean peel, an ideal of sweetness, a thin hit of rose

I could say this quince smelled like roses and citrus and rich women's perfume, but that isn't quite true. I could call this fruit  "the stranger," based on what John Gardner called one of two possible plots in all of fiction - "a stranger comes to town." (man goes on a journey being the other.) Calling quince "the stranger" could be fitting for a tale about the fruit of rooted things written by a woman whose female forebears did not make journeys. ... I inhaled this stranger, my first quince, until my nose lost track of honey and citrus, but still held a wisp of cool, clean peel, an ideal of sweetness, a thin hit of rose. 

K. Lebo, The book of difficult fruit (2021), 219-20

The word "garnet" comes from "pomegranate," as does "grenade"

 The word "garnet" comes from "pomegranate," as does "grenade," so named for the way a shrapnel-scattering grenade imitates the seed-scattering explosion of a smashed pomegranate.

K. Lebo, The book of difficult fruit (2021), 210