“Now my five sensesgather into a meaningall acts, all presences;and as a lily gathersthe elements together,in me this dark and shining,that stillness and that moving,these shapes that spring from nothing,become a rhythm that dances,a pure design.While I'm in my five sensesthey send me spinningall sounds and silences,all shape and colouras thread for that weaver,whose web within me growingfollows beyond my knowingsome pattern sprung from nothing-a rhythm that dancesand is not mine.”

“I know nothing of this silence except that it lies outside the reach of my intelligence, beyond words - that is why this silence must win, must inevitably defeat me, because it is not a presence at all.”

“But I believe the words entered me and changed me and still work in me. The words eat me and sustain me. And when I'm dead and in a box in the dark dark ground, and all my various souls have died and I am nothing but insensible bones, something in the marrow will still feel yearning, desire persisting beyond flesh.”

“And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward!”

“After shutting off the phone to ignore the incessant ringing, I'm proud of myself. I hear nothing but silence. There is nothing torturing me. There is no sound to make me jump or panic. There is nothing but complete silence, well, Except In My Head, but whatever.”

“My lips are fierce with passion. My heart spins fiery beats. A rhythm lives within my fingers and dances in my feet.”