“It was less like seeing than like being for the first time seen, knocked breathless by a powerful glance.”

“And then to win the prize had been incredible. She felt like she was being seen, actually being seen, for the first time in the endless years of being a mother and a wife.”

“She was happier than I'd ever seen her, and for the first time, I felt like a normal, whole human being instead of some broken, angry man.”

“When her doctor took her bandages off and led her into the garden, the girl who was no longer blind saw “the tree with the lights in it.” It was for this tree I searched through the peach orchards of summer, in the forests of fall and down winter and spring for years. Then one day I was walking along Tinker creek and thinking of nothing at all and I saw the tree with the lights in it. I saw the backyard cedar where the mourning doves roost charged and transfigured, each cell buzzing with flame. I stood on the grass with the lights in it, grass that was wholly fire, utterly focused and utterly dreamed. It was less like seeing that like being for the first time see, knocked breathless by a powerful glance. The flood of fire abated, but I’m still spending the power. Gradually the lights went out in the cedar, the colors died, the cells un-flamed and disappeared. I was still ringing. I had been my whole life a bell and never knew it until at that moment I was lifted and struck. I have since only very rarely seen the tree with the lights in it. The vision comes and goes, mostly goes, but I live for it, for the moment the mountains open and a new light roars in spate through the crack, and the mountains slam.”

“Fandom is less like being in love than like being in love with love.”

“The human capacity for burden is like a bamboo - far more flexible than youd ever believe at first glance.”