“The thing we are trying to say is in the language of leaves.”

“Yes. A language that will at last say what we have to say. For our words no longer correspond to the world. When things were whole, we felt confident that our words could express them. But little by little these things have broken apart, shattered, collapsed into chaos. And yet our words have remained the same. Hence, every time we try to speak of what we see, we speak falsely, distorting the very thing we are trying to represent. […] Consider a word that refers to a thing- “ umbrella”, for example. […] Not only is an umbrella a thing, it is a thing that performs a function. […] What happens when a thing no longer performs its function? […] the umbrella ceases to be an umbrella. It has changed into something else. The word, however, has remained the same. Therefore it can no longer express the thing.”

“That was the hard thing about grief, and the grieving. They spoke another language, and the words we knew always fell short of what we wanted them to say.”

“Maybe language is kind, giving us these double meanings. Maybe it's trying to teach us a lesson, that we can always be two things at once.”

“There was a language in the world that everyone understood, a language the boy had used throughout the time that he was trying to improve things at the shop. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.”

“We didn't say anything because there was such an awful lot to say, and no language to say it in.”