“So these things happen, deep in our lives. We do not speak of them. We hide them even from ourselves, but they do not leave us.”

“What else should our lives be but a continual series of beginnings, of painful settings out into the unknown, pushing off from the edges of consciousness into the mystery of what we have not yet be...”

“Here is the life you have tried to throw away. Here is your second chance. Here is the destiny you have tried to shake off by inventing a hundred false roles, a hundred false identities for yoursel...”

“He wanted to be a poet,' someone else put in while Maggie hugged Tim and patted his back. 'Said he'd only lacked the words to be one.”

“I act as the tongue of you,... tied in your mouth . . . . in mine it begins to be loosened.”

“To be a poet is to have a soul so quick to discern, that no shade of quality escapes it, and so quick to feel, that discernment is but a hand playing with finely-ordered variety on the chords of em...”