{"quotes":[{"text":"Metaphor isn't just decorative language. If it were, it wouldn't scare us so much. . . . Colorful language threatens some people, who associate it, I think, with a kind of eroticism (playing with language in public = playing with yourself), and with extra expense (having to sense or feel more). I don't share that opinion. Why reduce life to a monotone? Is that truer to the experience of being alive? I don't think so. It robs us of life's many textures. Language provides an abundance of words to keep us company on our travels. But we're losing words at a reckless pace, the national vocabulary is shrinking. Most Americans use only several hundred words or so. Frugality has its place, but not in the larder of language. We rely on words to help us detail how we feel, what we once felt, what we can feel. When the blood drains out of language, one's experience of life weakens and grows pale. It's not simply a dumbing down, but a numbing.","author":"Diane Ackerman","tags":["language","metaphor","vocabulary"],"id":1649,"author_id":"Diane+Ackerman"},{"text":"Until the thirst for power parched his throat, he was a fearless and noble lord.","author":"Lloyd Alexander","tags":["1965","metaphor","turn-of-phrase"],"id":5008,"author_id":"Lloyd+Alexander"},{"text":"The power of the metaphor is that in a single flash the entire idea is revealed.","author":"G.R. Gopinath","tags":["communication","metaphor"],"id":5489,"author_id":"G.R.+Gopinath"},{"text":"The Americans’ great wealth (and their great love for it) makes it precisely the appropriate metaphor. Supply and Demand as a principle has permeated their minds. As a practice, it stains all the way down to their souls.","author":"Geoffrey Wood","tags":["american","christian-fiction","christianity","love","metaphor","religion","souls","supply-and-demand"],"id":8299,"author_id":"Geoffrey+Wood"},{"text":"I always thought of it like you said, that all the strings inside him broke. But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we’re grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is alive. We don’t suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you’re imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you’re saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications. Do you know what I mean?","author":"John Green","tags":["metaphor"],"id":8340,"author_id":"John+Green"},{"text":"Every few minutes or so I would remember the look from the man who had wanted fifty cents, and I'd look at that framed memory hanging in myself and it meant I was here, back in this sick city, but in other ways I was not here at all and anyone who looked closely could see that I had nothing to give, that I was a junk drawer, a collection of things that may or may not have had a use.","author":"Catherine Lacey","tags":["catherine-lacey","disconnected","mental-illness","metaphor","nobody-is-ever-missing","nothing-to-give","removed"],"id":8737,"author_id":"Catherine+Lacey"},{"text":"You told me that Kafka was not a thinker, and that a 'genetic' approach to his work would disclose that much of it was only a kind of very imaginative whining. That was during the period when you were going in for wrecking operations, feeling, I suppose, that the integrity of your own mental processes was best maintained by a series of strong, unforgiving attacks. You made quite an impression on everyone, in those days: you ruffled blouse, you long magenta skirt slit to the knee, the dagger thrust into your boot. 'Is that a metaphor?' I asked, pointing to the dagger; you shook your head, smiled, said no.","author":"Donald Barthelme","tags":["kafka","metaphor"],"id":8979,"author_id":"Donald+Barthelme"},{"text":"If you're good at this job, and I am, then every step in a murder case moves you in one direction: towards order. We get thrown shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together until we can lift the picture out of the darkness and hold it up to the white light of day, solid, complete, clear. Under all the paperwork and the politics, this is the job; this is its cool shining heart that I love with every fiber of mine. This case was different. It was running backwards, dragging us with it on some ferocious ebb tide. Every step washed us deeper in black chaos, wrapped us tighter in tendrils of crazy and pulled us downwards.","author":"Tana French","tags":["broken-harbor","detective","investigation","metaphor","murder","tana-french"],"id":9202,"author_id":"Tana+French"},{"text":"And as he leaned in to kiss me, my eye saw his open mouth grow larger and larger until it seemed it could swallow me whole.","author":"Alexandra Kleeman","tags":["alexandra-kleeman","creepy","intimations","kiss","metaphor","relationships"],"id":10087,"author_id":"Alexandra+Kleeman"},{"text":"Old beliefs do not lead you to new cheese.","author":"Spencer Johnson","tags":["metaphor","to-think-about"],"id":10151,"author_id":"Spencer+Johnson"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":537,"pages":54,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}