I sat staring, staring, staring - half lost, learning a new language or rather the same language in a different dialect. So still were the big woods where I sat, sound might not yet have been born.

One of the greatest features of science is that it doesn't matter where you were born, and it doesn't matter what the belief systems of your parents might have been: If you perform the same experiment that someone else did, at a different time and place, you'll get the same result.

The same myths are told in every culture, and they might swap out details, but it's still the same story. It's the same story, but with a different face.

Learning another language is not only learning different words for the same things, but learning another way to think about things.

Oh child, your language is so utterly simple and limited that it has the affect of extreme complication.
-Aunt Beast

Big stuff and little: learning how to order breakfast in a country where I don't speak the language and haven't been before - that's really satisfying to me. I like that.