“The stems stood tall and straight, one series arranged in a single line, the other in a crudely shaped heart, the final one in the shape of the letter U. I love you.”

“but paper and ink have conjuring abilities of their own. arrangements of lines and shapes, of letters and words on a series of pages make a world we can dwell and travel in.”

“Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.”

“But I began then to think of time as having a shape, something you could see, like a series of liquid transparencies, one laid on top of another.”

“...but after reading a chapter or two a shadow seemed to lie across the page. It was a straight dark bar, a shadow shaped something like the letter 'I.' One began dodging this way and that to catch a glimpse of the landscape behind it. Whether that was indeed a tree or a woman walking I was not quite sure. Back one was always hailed to the letter 'I.”

“The growth of love is not a straight line, but a series of hills and valleys.”