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41 " Almost everything important in life is invisible. "
― Nadja Sam
42 " For me that's the only way of understanding a particular term that everyone here bandies about quite happily, but which clearly can't be quite that straight forward because it doesn't exist in many languages, only in Italian and Spanish, as far as I know, but then again, I don't know that many languages. Perhaps in German too, although I can't be sure: el enamoramiento--the state of falling or being in love, or perhaps infatuation. I'm referring to the noun, the concept; the adjective, the condition, are admittedly more familiar, at least in French, although not in English, but there are words that approximate that meaning ... We find a lot of people funny, people who amuse and charm us and inspire affection and even tenderness, or who please us, captivate us, and can even make us momentarily mad, we enjoy their body and their company or both those things, as is the case for me with you and as I've experienced before with other women, on other occasions, although only a few. Some become essential to us, the force of habit is very strong and ends up replacing or even supplanting almost everything else. It can supplant love, for example, but not that state of being in love, it's important to distinguish between the two things, they're easily confused, but they're not the same ... It's very rare to have a weakness, a genuine weakness for someone, and for that someone to provoke in us that feeling of weakness. "
― Javier Marías , Los enamoramientos
43 " Issib wasn't thrilled to see him. I'm busy and don't need interruptions." " This is the household library," said Nafai. " This is where we always come to do research." " See? You're interrupting already." " Look, I didn't say anything, I just came in here, and you started picking at me the second I walked in the door." " I was hoping you'd walk back out." " I can't. Mother sent me here." Nafai walked over behind Issib, who was floating comfortably in the air in front of his computer display. It was layered thirty pages deep, but each page had only a few words on it, so he could see almost everything at once. Like a game of solitaire, in which Issib was simply moving fragments from place to place. The fragments were all words in weird languages. The ones Nafai recognized were very old. " What language is that?" Nafai asked pointing, to one. Issib signed. " I'm so glad you're not interrupting me." " What is it, some ancient form of Vijati?" " Very good. It's Slucajan, which came from Obilazati, the original form of Vijati. It's dead now." " I read Vijati, you know." " I don't." " Oh, so you're specializing in ancient, obscure languages that nobody speaks anymore, including you?" " I'm not learning these languages, I'm researching lost words." " If the whole language is dead, then all the words are lost." " Words that used to have meanings, but that died out or survived only in idiomatic expressions. Like 'dancing bear.' What's a bear, do you know?" " I don't know. I always thought it was some kind of graceful bird." " Wrong. It's an ancient mammal. Known only on Earth, I think, and not brought here. Or it died out soon. It was bigger than a man, very powerful. A predator." " And it danced?" " The expression used to mean something absurdly clumsy. Like a dog walking on its hind legs." " And now it means the opposite. That's weird. How could it change?" " Because there aren't any bears. THe meaning used to be obvious, because everybody knew a bear and how clumsy it would look, dancing. But when the bears were gone, the meaning could go anywhere. Now we use it for a person who's extremely deft in getting out of an embarrassing social situation. It's the only case that we use the word bear anymore. And you see a lot of people misspelling it, too." " Great stuff. You doing a linguistics project?" " No." " What's this for, then?" " Me." " Just collection old idioms?" " Lost words." " Like bear? The word isn't lost, Issya. It's the bears that are gone." " Very good, Nyef. You get full credit for the assignment. Go away now. "
44 " This is followed by laughter because we're in high school, which means we're predictable and almost everything is funny, especially if it's someone else's public humiliation. "
― Jennifer Niven , All the Bright Places
45 " America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true and the opposite is probably equally true. "
46 " The essay is a literary device for saying almost everything about almost anything. "
― Aldous Huxley
47 " Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything - all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure - these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. "
48 " I loved almost everything about being a teacher, but I was an unusual teacher. "
49 " The Left is doing to America what it has done to almost everything it has deeply influenced - the arts, the university, religion, culture, minorities, Europe: ruining it. "
50 " You can look at Bad Religion, and, really, almost everything I've ever done was an exercise in creativity. I've always had a desire to challenge and question authority, and that's where the fire inside comes from. I challenged authority out of a desire to make things better, not to be nihilistic about it. "
51 " In almost everything that touches our everyday life on earth, God is pleased when we're pleased. He wills that we be as free as birds to soar and sing our maker's praise without anxiety. "
52 " Certainly almost everything we do and think is colored in some way by memes, but it is important to realize that not everything we experience is a meme. If I walk down the street and see a tree, the basic perception that's going on is not memetic. "
53 " I think of myself as a fairly logical, scientific and somewhat reserved person. Maura Isles, the Boston medical examiner who appears in five of my books, is me. Almost everything I use in describing her, from her taste in wine to her biographical data, is taken from my own family. Except I don't have a serial killer as a mother! "
54 " Like almost everything else from the West, the Romantic Revolution arrived late in Russia. "
55 " I would say that I have a love-hate relationship with almost everything in my life, including stand-up. "
56 " I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election. "
57 " We ought to have more women in various management positions, because women are the ones who decide almost everything in the home. "