“And now the thought came to me that I lived much of my life through the pages of books as well. That perhaps I, too, was only a paper figure. A cut-out, or silhouette. Flat.I always thought I knew the shape of my life. Of course I thought I knew about life, thought I knew all I needed - or wanted - to know. And yet, like the opening left when a burning star falls from its perch, now an unexpected hole was left in what was once a solid curtain of understanding... ( )... Sitting under the cold stars, I understood that it was death that made me recognize life, and the existence, or pherhaps the non-existence of my own beeing.”

“But it wasn't just the distance. It was what had happened to me since these days, those endless, quiet days when I thought my life would always continue in that way. When my life consisted of small, certain pieces of a larger, but basically simple, puzzle.When I was certain that I always knew where each piece fit.”

“I had never wanted attention, and now I waspurposely inviting it. As I had told Dr Duverger, I had little vanity, and yet one recentmorning I realized that I was avoiding looking at my own reflection, because it wasdisturbing. Did I wish to go through life like this? Yes, the scar was a horrible mementoof what I had done to my father, but now I questioned whether I needed it to be soobvious. The actual weight was within me. I carried it as though it were a heavyearthenware pot of water. I had to walk through my days carefully, so as not to let it spillover. It was my own personal burden, not necessary to be shared with all who looked atme.”

“I knew my box of paints, stored away on the bedroom shelf of my small house across the ocean, could never create such colors.”

“I thought I had my life mapped out, thought I had it together. Then you came along and flipped my world on its head. You make me want things I never knew I needed.”

“Once when I was younger I went out and sat under the sky and looked up and asked it to take me back. What I should have done was gone to the swamp and bog and ask them to bring me back because, if anything is, mud and marsh are the origins of life. Now i think of the storm that made chaos, that the storm opened a door. It tried to make over a world the way it wanted it to be. At school I learned that storms create life, that lightning, with its nitrogen, is a beginning; bacteria and enzymes grow new life from decay out of darkness and water. It's into this that I want to fall, into swamp and mud and sludge and it seems like falling is the natural way of things; gravity needs no fuel, no wings. It needs only stillness and waiting and time.”

“Perhaps it was the word "God" that was inviting to me, a word I thought I knew too much about. The one who had tortured Job, who had Abraham lift the ax to his son, who, disguised as a whale, had swallowed Jonah. I know now that the name does not refer to any deity, but means simply to call out and pray, to summon.”