Donna Tartt Quote

The value of Greek prose composition, he said, [was that] if done properly, off the top of one's head, it taught one to think in Greek. One's thought patterns become different, he said, when forced into the confines of a rigid and unfamiliar tongue. Certain common ideas become inexpressible; other, previously undreamt-of ones spring to life, finding miraculous new articulation. By necessity, I suppose, it is difficult for me to explain in English exactly what I mean. I can only say that an 'incendium' is in its nature entirely different from the 'feu' with which a Frenchman lights his cigarette, and both are very different from the stark, inhuman 'pur' that the Greeks knew, the 'pur' that roared from the towers of Ilion or leapt and screamed on that desolate, windy beach, from the funeral pyre of Patroklos.