The tongue of man is a twisty thing.

Where is the weapon with which I enforce your bondage? You give it to me every time you open your mouth.

I'm so great even I get tongue-tied talking to myself.

I'm so great even I get tongue-tied talking to myself.

You may lie with your mouth, but with the mouth you make as you do so you none the less tell the truth.

For God's sake hold your tongue, and let me love

I am stuffing your mouth with your
promises and watching
you vomit them out upon my face.

In matters where I have no cognizance
I hold my tongue.

I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.

But break, my heart, for I must hold my tongue.

I exist. It's sweet, so sweet, so slow. And light: you'd think it floated all by itself. It stirs. It brushes by me, melts and vanishes. Gently, gently. There is bubbling water in my throat, it caresses me- and now it comes up again into my mouth. For ever I shall have a little pool of whitish water in my mouth - lying low - grazing my tongue. And this pool is still me. And the tongue. And the throat is me.

A warm flow of pain was gradually replacing the ice and wood of the anaesthetic in his thawing, still half-dead, abominably martyred mouth. After that, during a few days he was in mourning for an intimate part of himself. It surprised him to realize how fond he had been of his teeth. His tongue, a fat sleek seal, used to flop and slide so happily among the familiar rocks, checking the contours of a battered but still secure kingdom, plunging from cave to cove, climbing this jag, nuzzling that notch, finding a shred of sweet seaweed in the same old cleft; but now not a landmark remained, and all there existed was a great dark wound, a terra incognita of gums which dread and disgust forbade one to investigate. And when the plates were thrust in, it was like a poor fossil skull being fitted with the grinning jaws of a perfect stranger.

The world is in pain, and its pain makes strangers of us all and ties my tongue in a lover’s knot.

I just enjoy translating, it's like opening one's mouth and hearing someone else's voice emerge.