"Metaphors in the Speech are . . . weird. I mean, they absolutely exist. There are wizardries you can only do by making one thing stand in for another -- re-enactments, for example."

(One hand has strayed to the scars on the opposite forearm, tracing them absently.)

"But they're still not exactly metaphors like we understand them in English. If you say -- I don't know, if you say 'Hope is a thing with feathers' in the Speech, it passes out of a poetic image and into at least a kind of reality."