Imagination, she figured, just wasn't up to the task of understanding unique and foreign sensations. It only knew how to dampen or augment what it al… - Hugh Howey

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Imagination, she figured, just wasn't up to the task of understanding unique and foreign sensations. It only knew how to dampen or augment what it already knew. It would be like telling someone what sex felt like, or an orgasm. Impossible. But once you felt it yourself, you could then imagine varying degrees of this new sensation.

It was the same as color. You could only describe a new color in terms of hues previously seen. You could mix the known, but you couldn't create the strange out of nothing.