Quotes by Translators

it is not the first language that is all-important, but which language captures the adolescent's imagination when he or she first discovers literature.
Ned Thomas
My love for Neo-Tokyo is a bulbous massof post-human organic circuitry.Cyperpunk is my mother tongue.My love is a man-machine interface gun.
Yann Rousselot
Once I knew, then I forgot. It was as if I had fallen asleep in a field only to discover at waking that a grove of trees had grown up around me. “Doubt nothing, believe everything,” was my friend’s idea of metaphysics, although his brother ran away with his wife. He still bought her a rose every day, sat in the empty house for the next twenty years talking to her about the weather. I was already dozing off in the shade, dreaming that the rustling trees were my many selves explaining themselves all at the same time so that I could not make out a single word. My life was a beautiful mystery on the verge of understanding, always on the verge! Think of it! My friend’s empty house with every one of its windows lit. The dark trees multiplying all around it.
Charles Simic
If the king had given me for my ownParis, his citadel,And I for that must leave aloneHer whom I love so well,I'd say then to the CrownTake back your glittering townMy darling is more fair, I swear.My darling is more fair.
Richard Wilbur
To sit indoors was silly. I postponed the search for Savchenko and Ludmila till the next day and went wandering about Paris. The men wore bowlers, the women huge hats with feathers. On the café terraces lovers kissed unconcernedly - I stopped looking away. Students walked along the boulevard St. Michel. They walked in the middle of the street, holding up traffic, but no one dispersed them. At first I thought it was a demonstration - but no, they were simply enjoying themselves. Roasted chestnuts were being sold. Rain began to fall. The grass in the Luxembourg gardens was a tender green. In December! I was very hot in my lined coat. (I had left my boots and fur cap at the hotel.) There were bright posters everywhere. All the time I felt as though I were at the theatre.
Ilya Ehrenburg
Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.
Emma Lazarus
She knows she is in Chicago. But she does not yet realize that she is in Illinois.
Lydia Davis
In our broad sweep, the city looks like a single gigantic creature - or more like a single collective entity created by many intertwining organism. Countless arteries stretch to the ends of its elusive body, circulating a continuous supply of fresh blood cells, sending out new data and collecting the old, sending out new consumables and collecting the old, sending out new contradictions and collecting the old. To the rhythm of its pulsing, all parts of the body flicker and flare up and squirm. Midnight is approaching, and while the peak of activity has passed, the basal metabolism that maintains life continues undiminished, producing the basso continuo of the city's moan, a monotonous sound that neither rises nor falls but is pregnant with foreboding.
Haruki Murakamiurakami
If a man means his writing seriously he must mean to write well. But how can he write well until he learns to see what he has written badly. His progress toward good writing and his recognition of bad writing are bound to unfold at something like the same rate.
John Ciardi
Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.
Lin Yutang
The only sin passion can commit is to be joyless.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Every woman is a human being-one cannot repeat that too often-and a human being must have occupation if he or she is not to become a nuisance to the world.
Dorothy L. Sayers
You have to fall in love with hanging around words.
John Ciardi
Words writ in waters.
George Chapman
All women's dresses are merely variations on the eternal struggle between the admitted desire to dress and the unadmitted desire to undress.
Lin Yutang
Time and trouble will tame an advanced young woman. But an advanced old woman is uncontrollable by any force.
Dorothy L. Sayers
A brilliant epigram is a solemn platitude gone to a masquerade ball.
Lionel Strachey
Boys are the cash of war. Whoever said: we're not free spenders- doesn't know our like.
John Ciardi
The worst sin-perhaps the only sin- passion can commit is to be joyless.
Dorothy L. Sayers
Taste is the feminine of genius.
Edward FitzGerald
Society can only exist on the basis that there is some amount of polished lying and that no one says exactly what he thinks.
Lin Yutang
The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of nonessentials.
Lin Yutang
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can.
Lin Yutang
Kill the snake of doubt in your soul crush the worms of fear in your heart and mountains will move out of your way.
Kate Seredy
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do.
Lin Yutang
Security is a false god begin making sacrifices to it and you are lost.
Paul Bowles
Praise the sea on shore remain.
John Florio
Do what thy manhood bids thee do.
Sir Richard Burton
Vengeance is sweet.
William Painter
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Faith means intense usually confident belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
Walter Kaufmann
There is an illusion that has much to do with ... most of our unhappiness. ... We expect too much.
Joseph Farrell
The man who most vividly realizes a difficulty is the man most likely to overcome it.
Joseph Farrell
I have taught you my dear flock for above thirty years how to live and I will show you in a very short time how to die.
George Sandys
Our prayers run along one road and God's answers by another and by and by they meet.
Adoniram Judson
God answers all true prayer either in kind or in kindness.
Adoniram Judson
Let me burn out for God ... prayer is the great thing. Oh that I may be a man of prayer!
Henry Martyn
This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
Lin Yutang
Hope is like a road in the country there was never a road but when many people walk on it the road comes into existence.
Lin Yutang
Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
John Ciardi
Modern art is what happens when painters stop looking at girls and persuade themselves they have a better idea.
John Ciardi
At any rate you can bear it for a quarter of an hour!
Theodore Haecker
If we only knew the real value of a day.
Joseph Farrell
The Night has a thousand eyes The Day but one Yet the light of the bright world dies With the dying sun.
Francis William Bourdillon
Music touches places beyond our touching.
Keith Bosley
Do what thy manhood bids thee do.
Sir Richard Burton
Vengeance is sweet.
William Painter
The worst moment for the atheist is when he is really thankful and has nobody to thank.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Faith means intense usually confident belief that is not based on evidence sufficient to command assent from every reasonable person.
Walter Kaufmann
There is an illusion that has much to do with ... most of our unhappiness. ... We expect too much.
Joseph Farrell
Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do than what one can do.
Lin Yutang
The man who most vividly realizes a difficulty is the man most likely to overcome it.
Joseph Farrell
I have taught you my dear flock for above thirty years how to live and I will show you in a very short time how to die.
George Sandys
Our prayers run along one road and God's answers by another and by and by they meet.
Adoniram Judson
God answers all true prayer either in kind or in kindness.
Adoniram Judson
Let me burn out for God ... prayer is the great thing. Oh that I may be a man of prayer!
Henry Martyn
This I conceive to be the chemical function of humor: to change the character of our thought.
Lin Yutang
Hope is like a road in the country there was never a road but when many people walk on it the road comes into existence.
Lin Yutang
Peace of mind is that mental condition in which you have accepted the worst.
Lin Yutang
Every parent is at some time the father of the unreturned prodigal with nothing to do but keep his house open to hope.
John Ciardi