“The unwaking world was as hushed as a deep forest.”

“I felt all the ways in which this world seemed so, so enormous--the height of the trees, the hush and tick of the forest, the shift of the sunlight and shadows--but also so, so removed.”

“The house was still as death, and nothing but the wailing of the wind broke the deep hush.”

“Once I discovered Robin Hood and the medieval poem “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” I realized that I felt a very deep calling to the Wild forest, the deep forest, the Wood that holds the Deep Mysteries and where the Wild Hunt is run....”

“Where mathematics was a magnificent imaginary building, the world of story as represented by Dickens was like a deep, magical forest for Tengo. When mathematics stretched infinitely upward toward the heavens, the forest spread out beneath his gaze in silence, its dark, sturdy roots stretching deep into the earth. In the forest there were no maps, no numbered doorways.... Tengo began deliberately to put some distance between himself and the world of mathematics, and instead the forest of story began to exert a stronger pull on his heart... Someday he might be able to decipher the spell. That possibility would gently warm his heart from within.”

“Chameleonesque, hobbitish, unicorned, stompled, selfishism, and unwakeable may not be real words, but you do know what they mean.”