With languages, you are at home anywhere Edmund de Waal More Quotes by Edmund de Waal More Quotes From Edmund de Waal With languages, you can move from one social situation to another. With languages, you are at home anywhere. Edmund de Waal hometravelmoving The problem is that I am in the wrong century to burn things. I am the wrong generation to let it go. Edmund de Waal let-it-gogenerationsproblem Stories are a kind of thing, too. Stories and objects share something, a patina. I thought I had this clear, two years ago before I started, but I am no longer sure how this works. Perhaps a patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential is revealed, the way that a striated stone tumbled in a river feels irreducible, the way that this netsuke of a fox has become little more than a memory of a nose and a tail. But it also seems additive, in the way that a piece of oak furniture gains over years and years of polishing, and the way the leaves of my medlar shine. Edmund de Waal riversmemoriestwo
