A Quote by John le Carre

To possess another language, Charlemagne tells us, is to possess another soul. German is such a language. Once you have it in your head, you can go there anytime, you can close the door, you have a refuge.
To possess another language is to possess another soul.
To have another language is to possess a second soul.
We possess books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves.
In Buenos Aires, I have a very close friend who speaks very good English, and she taught me. It was quite difficult because the muscles of your mouth are used to your language, and then when you want to speak another language, they don't go to the place they need to go to make the sound.
We switch to another language-- not our invented language or the language we've learned from our lives. As we walk further up the mountain, we speak the language of silence. This language gives us time to think and move. We can be here and elsewhere at the same time.
There is another language beyond language, another place beyond heaven and hell. Precious gems come from another mine, the heart draws light from another source.
I'm German! Actually, I love my countr, ;I love the language. The German language is very special because it is so precise. There is a word for everything. There are so many wonderful words that other languages don't have. It is impressive to have such a rich language, and I love to work in that language.
For God's sake, let's take the word 'possess' and put a brick round its neck and drown it ... We can't possess one another. We can only give and hazard all we have.
I curse all negative purism that tells me not to use a word from another language that either expresses something that my own language cannot or does that in a more delicate manner.
If a novel is written in a certain language with certain characters from a particular community and the story is very good or illuminating, then that work is translated into the language of another community - then they begin to see through their language that the problems described there are the same as the problems they are having. They can identify with characters from another language group.
Learn a language of another country and then you can go to that country: a place where the problems of your family will not follow. A language they do not speak.
Tt just seems to be human nature to seem to want to posit in another human being, qualities that you must know, in part of your mind, that human being couldn't possess because you don't possess.
A basic language-literacy of Nature is falling from us. And what is being lost along with this literacy is something perhaps even more valuable: a kind of language-magic, the power that certain words possess to enchant our imaginative relations with Nature and landscape.
He told me that once, in the war, he’d come upon a German soldier in the grass with his insides falling out; he was just lying there in agony. The soldier had looked up at Sergeant Leonard, and even though they didn’t speak the same language, they understood each other with just a look. The German lying on the ground; the American standing over him. He put a bullet in the soldier’s head. He didn’t do it with anger, as an enemy, but as a fellow man, one soldier helping another.
Every time another tribe becomes extinct and their language dies, another way of life and another way of understanding the world disappears forever. Even if it has been painstakingly studied and recorded, a language without a people to speak - it means little. A language can only live if its people live, and if today's uncontacted tribes are to have a future, we must respect their right to choose their own way of life.
to read is to surrender oneself to an endless displacement of curiosity and desire from one sentence to another, from one action to another, from one level of a text to another. The text unveils itself before us, but never allows itself to be possessed; and instead of trying to possess it we should take pleasure in its teasing
This site uses cookies to ensure you get the best experience. More info...
Got it!