Teaser Tuesday (09.15.09)

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly event hosted by MizB at Should Be Reading. It’s easy enough to play along, just follow the Teaser Tuesdays link for rules.

This week’s quote comes to you from The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova.

The dons and students alike wore disappointingly modern dress, mostly wool sweaters, with dark flannel trousers for the mentor and blue jeans for the disciple. I thought with regret that in Rossi’s time, a good forty years before we stepped off our bus onto Broad Street, Oxford must at least have dressed with a little more dignity. (pp. 195-196)

After picking out my quote for today, I came across this one that I just had to add. Having been in a Hungarian-speaking part of Romania a few years ago, I can completely relate to this:

Listening carefully, I realized that she must be speaking Hungarian; I knew at least that Romanian was a Romance language, so I thought I might have understood a few words. But what Helen was speaking sounded like the galloping of horses, a Finno-Ugric stampede that I could not arrest with my ear for even a second. (p. 311)

Ah, so true! Hungarian sounds like nothing else. I was able to learn a few phrases, but for some reason I can only remember how to say “I am a banana” and “just kidding.” Obviously my brain knows how to remember the important things.