“And then I became aware of all the magnificent silk wrapped around my body, and had the feeling I might drown in beauty. At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.”

“At that moment, beauty itself struck me as a kind of painful melancholy.”

“She was the most beautiful thing in my life and my mind had settled long ago that she always would be. I loved her so much I could barely wrap my mind around it. It was like the sun being the center of the universe, the planets all held captive around it, unable to break free of the pull and unable to sustain without its magnificence. She was my sun, the absolute center of my universe.”

“It almost contradicts itself," she says after a moment. "It's as if there is love and loss at the same time, together in a kind of beautiful pain.”

“When my whole body is pushed against his, I wrap my legs around his waist, forcing him to carry me the way my heart had been carrying HIM since the moment he saw me.”

“I prayed hard and only gradually became aware that this fierce praying was a way of finding prologue and entrance into my own writing. This came as both astonishment and relief. When I thought God had abandoned me, I discovered that He had simply given me a different voice to praise the inexhaustible beauty of the made world.”