“Had any poet adequately described the wretched ugliness of a loved one turned inside out with grief?”

“...and I wonder if there is any way to adequately describe the folly that causes us to undo all the great gifts of both Earth and Heaven.”

“Only one English word adequately describes his transformation of the islands from worthless to priceless: magical.”

“There was no word in the dictionary adequate to describe the sensation other than sensational.”

“Some part of him had hoped that a woman might one day see beyond his scars to the man he was inside. But Megan was doing more than just ignoring his ugliness. She was _accepting_ it with a woman's gentleness, her touch soothing memories of savage pain, grief, loneliness.”

“Poetry by its very nature is subversive . . . It turns words inside out, confounds meaning, changes black and white to ambiguous shades of gray. Never trust a poet.”