Language is wine upon the lips.

Language is wine upon the lips

I begin to long for some little language such as lovers use, broken words, inarticulate words, like the shuffling of feet on pavement.

When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.

But Sasha was from Russia, where the sunsets are longer, the dawns less sudden and sentences are often left unfinished from doubt as how to best end them.

It [discovering Finnish] was like discovering a wine-cellar filled with bottles of amazing wine of a kind and flavour never tasted before. It quite intoxicated me.