She's a flower, she's perishable, she's half hidden, - and she's ultimately dead and in the ground-- whereas a star would seem to be something that she just can't be mapped onto if she is this half-hidden thing.

她是一朵花，是易腐烂的，有一半深埋在土里，最终凋谢回归土地-,如果她一般在土里,她就不可能是星星。

耶鲁公开课 - 文学理论导论课程节选

There's a kind of aspect of value for many of us where we feel that something's especially valuable if it won't endure, if it's fragile, or if it's rare.

对我们许多人来说，有一种价值的方面在于,如果某事物不是持续的，如果是易碎的,或者是稀有的，我们就觉得它特别有价值。

耶鲁公开课 - 死亡课程节选

Now, let me just make the last point I want to make about this, and that's that because language is material, it has form, it has both closedness and possibility, it's susceptible to the workings of craft, it's also unpredictable. Tosses mobius strip on floor.

让我说关于此事的最后一个观点吧，正因为语言是物质的，它有固定模式，它没有尽头又充满可能，它易受,工艺品的影响，它同时也是不可预知的。

耶鲁公开课 - 1945年后的美国小说课程节选