Era ➴

“Trying, he thought, to express some unutterable truth about themselves. Which was that translation was impossible. That the realm of pure meaning they captured and manifested would and could not ever be known. That the enterprise of this tower had been impossible from inception. For how could there ever be an Adamic language? The thought now made him laugh. There was no innate, perfectly comprehensible language. There was no candidate - not English, not French - that could bully and absorb enough to become one. Language was just difference. A thousand different ways of seeing, of moving through the world. No, a thousand worlds within one. And translation, a necessary endeavor however futile, to move between them.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“This is why fairy tales are dangerous: their words sneak into your veins and travel into the chambers of your heart, where they whisper of your exceptionalism. They say: Ah, but remember the boy who walked into the woods and came out a king? Oh, but what of the girl who was kicked and slept in ashes? Remember the man who was only kind and so life bent around the shape of his smile? But we are not exceptional.”
― Roshani Chokshi, The Last Tale of the Flower Bride

“In fact, she was both my first and second words: Umma, then Mom. I called to her in two languages. Even then I must have known that no one would ever love me as much as she would.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“Nice comes from the Latin word for “stupid”,’ said Griffin. ‘We do not want to be nice.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel