“The difficulty, after having the experience to symbolize, lies only in having enough imagination to suspend it in a thought; and further to give this thought such verbal expression that others may be able to decipher it, and to be stirred by it as by a wind of suggestion sweeping the whole forest of their memories.”

“After all, she may have thought, do words say everything? Can words say anything? Do not words destroy the symbol that lies beyond the reach of words?”

“What if we can’t have it all?” His expression was pained and I knew it was because he was admitting he may not be able to give me everything I wanted. “What if we can only have each other?”

“:Paintings are easy to see," he said after a moment. "Open, presented flat to the eye. Words are not easy. Words have to be discovered, deep in their pages, deciphered, translated, read. Words are symbols to be encoded, their letters trees in a forest, enmeshed, their tangled meanings never finally picked apart.”

“A true symbol appears only when there is a need to express what thought cannot think or what is only divined or felt.”

“She was staring after me with an expression she probably would have said was thoughtful.”