"It's like that when I touch myself" (Simile)
After Cate suffers from one of her fits, she compares the fits to masturbation, saying that it is a moment in which she is completely in the present moment, and in her body. She says, "Just before I'm wondering what it'll be like, and just after I'm thinking about the next one, but just as it happens it's lovely, I don't think of nothing else." In this moment, she conflates her episodes with a kind of lustful presence.
"Like the first cigarette of the day." (Simile)
Ian uses his own simile to understand what Cate means when she describes her fits. He compares the feeling of having an episode to "the first cigarette of the day." For him, absolute presence is most akin to having a cigarette or pursuing a vice.
“Surgeon brought in this lump of rotting pork, stank. My lung.” (Metaphor)
When he describes his health situation, and the fact that he is ruining his lungs with smoking, Ian describes an incident in which he lost his lung and the surgeon brought it in for him to see. He describes his lung as "this lump of rotting pork," a metaphor for how his organ looked like meat that had turned.
"You look like a lesbos" (Simile)
Early on in the play, Ian tells Cate that she looks like a lesbian, comparing her clothes to those worn by a lesbian. Implied in the simile is the fact that Ian doesn't think Cate dresses in feminine enough clothing.
"Saw thousands of people packing into trucks like pigs trying to leave town" (Simile)
The Soldier describes the vagaries of war to Ian, and compares people packing onto trucks looking for safety to pigs. This simile shows the ways that war is dehumanizing and horrific.
