“Even as I learned to name the plants -- dogwood, five-fingered fern, mugwort -- I was stunned by the failure of language to reflect what I saw or felt.”

“I felt melancholy, I felt joy, I felt dread, I felt a sadness so deep it cannot be described in words. I felt emotions that have not been given names, I felt emotions that have been given the wrong names, I saw what it meant to feel and I saw that it was all the same feeling and I felt big feelings, the old feelings, the ones before language, before the mind had language, before the mind had learned to tell a fake story called consciousness and developed anxiety when it invented time, and danger, and risk, and probability, and the future.”

“Are you scared? I understand. The first time I saw my reflection in the mirror, even I was frightened by how BIG my reflection was.”

“I cry, because I know what I felt from him, even if I cannot and dare not allow it be named.”

“The first time I saw hundreds of fiddlehead ferns boiling in an enormous pot I realized what an odd person I must be to hear tiny cries from the mouths of cooking vegetables.”

“What the world calls failure, I call learning.”