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“... it did gradually and tenaciously arouse within me a sensuous craving for such things as the destiny of soldiers, the tragic nature of their calling, the distant countries they would see, the ways they would die.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“[Nabokov] was a man who was in love with the sound of words. I think English was his third language. His first language was French and then Russian. And he explained why he liked writing in English better than other languages.

And he gave his example. The white horse. Well, if you say it in French, it's 'le cheval blanc'. But when you say 'cheval', you see a brown horse. You have to adjust your image to make it white. But because we put the adjective first, when the horse comes, it's already white.”
― Ruth Bader Ginsburg

“Surely, I thought, we do not deserve even a little happiness. Or perhaps we had acquired the bad habit of regarding even a little happiness as a big favor, which we would have to repay.”
― Yukio Mishima, Confessions of a Mask

“Translators transport nations into other nations. They are the first to reckon with distant modes of feeling. Even their mistakes are evidence of a positive force. Translation is our salvation. It draws us out of the well in which, entirely by chance, we are born.”
― Elena Ferrante, Incidental Inventions