“. . .the particular way he had of structuring his paragraphs, beginning and ending each with a joke that wasn't really a joke, but an insult cloaked in a silken cape.”
Source: A Little Life
“He has a vision of his life as a sliver of soap, worn and used and smoothed into a slender, blunt-edged arrow-head, a little more of it disintegrating with every day.”
Source: A Little Life
“Metaphorically, governance is like a “Steer,” Risk Management is like a “Brake.”
Source: Digitizing Boardroom: The Multifaceted Aspects of Digital Ready Boards
“They are very good odds. And I know that my scientific brain believes them, if not my panic-ridden, maternal one. Those odds should have made a difference to my reaction. I should have been able to take the diagnosis calmly, intelligently, reflectively. But that would be to assign rationality to this phenomenon. The trouble with abject fear - with searing, lurid metaphor - is that it is not rational. And the myths that spring out of fear that deep are certainly not. They are the stuff of nightmares. They are tenacious.”
Source: Malignant Metaphor: Confronting Cancer Myths
“The point is that if you think you can pinpoint the cause, then you can fool yourself into thinking you can avert the cause. It's deeply egotistical. It's life played as a grand insurance policy. Our myth-making around cancer stems from the same impulse. Because we don't know exactly why most of it happens, we weave a makeshift wisdom around it, a false prophet, which seeps into the common story and feeds our hunger to understand why. The guilt is a byproduct, a way to assign blame and seek absolution. It's a lesser evil than the forces of randomness. And it gives us the illusion of control.”
Source: Malignant Metaphor: Confronting Cancer Myths
“The predominant cancer metaphor is war. We fight cancer, usually valiantly. We attack tumors and try to annihilate them and bring out our arsenals to do that, and so on. It's us against cancer. This metaphor has come in for its share of criticism within the ethical, psychological and even oncological disciplines. A main concern is that when someone dies of cancer, the message that remains is that that person just hasn't fought hard enough, was not a brave enough soldier against the ultimate foe, did not really want to win.
The cancer-is-war metaphor does not seem to allow space for the idea that in actual war, some soldiers die heroically for the larger good, no matter which side wins. War is death. In the cancer war, if you die, you've lost and cancer has won. The dead are responsible not just for getting cancer, but also for failing to defeat it.”
Source: Malignant Metaphor: Confronting Cancer Myths
“When the truffles arrived the paintings leaned off the wall toward them.”
Source: Sweetbitter
“Live deeply, love madly, indulge moderately.”
Source: The God Sonnets: Naskar Art of Theology
“Culture is like the visible and invisible levels of an iceberg -”the solid state of “water.”
Source: Digital Valley: Five Pearls of Wisdom to Make Profound Influence
“I cannot hope to make you understand how the world is truly made,' he told her. 'Metaphor, then: the world is a weave, like threads woven into cloth.' His hand came out of his sleeve with a strip of his red ribbon.
'If you say so.'
'Everything, stone, trees, beasts, the sky, the waters, all are a weave of fabric,' he said patiently. 'But when you think, it is different. Your thinking snarls the fabric, knots it. If you were a magician, you could use the knot of your mind to pull on other threads. That is magic, and now you see how every simple it is. I wonder everyone does not become an enchanter.”
Source: Salute the Dark