“But I got a great deal else from the experience. I learned to pitch a tent and sleep beneath the stars. For a brief, proud period I was slender and fit. I gained a profound respect for the wilderness and nature and the benign dark power of woods. I understand now, in a way I never did before, the colossal scale of the world. I found patience and fortitude that I didn't know I had. I discovered an America that millions of people scarcely know exists. I made a friend. I came home.”

“I found it when I came to understand that I had to practice unconditional love, patience, and acceptance first before I could expect that from any partner. I had to become the person that I wanted to fall in love with.”

“If I had a life with Woods to look forward to I knew I could fight whatever darkness that tried to take me. Before Woods, I didnt know what I was living for. In my search to find myself, Id found so much more. I knew now why I wanted to live. I understood love. I had found it.”

“The wanting was a wilderness and I had to find my own way out of the woods. It took me four years, seven months, and three days to do it. I didn't know where I was going until I got there.It was a place called the Bridge of the Gods.”

“I was not proud of what I had learned but I never doubted that it was worth knowing.”

“Before I got here, I thought that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it didn't exist, to build a small, self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But that only led to a lonely life accompanied by the last words of the already dead, so I came here looking for a Great Perhaps, for real friends and a more-than-minor life.”