“Mandarin ducks mate for life and will die of loneliness if separated from their chosen mate.”

“his snores sounded like ducks mating.”

“Solitude is a human presumption. Every quiet step is thunder to beetle life underfoot, a tug of impalpable thread on the web pulling mate to mate and predator to prey, a beginning or an end. Every choice is a world made new for the chosen.”

“Surely this feisty, argumentative female could not be his life mate? Docile, he’d specifically written docile when he’d filled in his request for a mate. And this was who the spirits of his ancestors had chosen? A celestial jest on their part perhaps?”

“Human beings seek to experience reunion with God by encountering God in relationship to one another. We can speak of the persons who so reveal God to us as our soul mates. Every soul knows the qualities of its soul mates, because every soul knows the qualities of God that it feels separated from. God has placed the knowledge of the soul mates in our intuition.”

“Loneliness is the standard that separates life from death.”