It was a long story, and like most of the stories in the world, never finished. There was an ending - there always is - but the story went on past the ending - it always does.

I say only, but what does that mean?

This is not a love story, but love is in it.  That is, love is just outside it, looking for a way to break in.

Some people say that the best stories have no words...  It is true that words drop away, and that the important things are often left unsaid.  The important things are learned in faces, in gestures, not in our locked tongues.  The true things are too big or too small or in any case always the wrong size to fit the template called language.
I know that. But I know something else too...  Turn down the daily noise and at first there is the relief of silence.  And then, very quietly, as quiet as light, meaning returns.  Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.

That's the thing about some librarians - they love telling you a look is out of print, borrowed, lost, or not even written yet.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.

In the fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.

Darwin said something to me once for which I was grateful.  I had been trying to forget, trying to stop my mind reaching for a place where it can never home.  He said, 'Nothing can be forgotten.  Nothing can be lost.  The universe itself is one vast memory system.  Look back and you will find the beginnings of the world.'

Love is not part of natural selection.
Where did love begin?  What human being looked at another and saw in their face the forests and the sea?  Was there a day, exhausted and weary, dragging home food, arms cut and scarred, that you saw yellow flowers and, not knowing what you did, picked them because I love you?

I do not accept that life has an ordinary shape, or that there is anything ordinary about life at all. We make it ordinary, but it is not.

The light was as intense as a love affair.  I was blinded, delighted, not just because it was warm and wonderful, but because nature measures nothing.  Nobody needs this much sunlight.  Nobody needs droughts, volcanoes, monsoons, tornadoes either, but we get them, because our world is as extravagant as a world can be.  We are the ones obsessed by measurement.  The world just pours it out.