The secret is not to write about what you love best, but about what you, alone, love at all. - Annie Dillard

At night on land migrating monarchs slumber on certain trees, hung in festoons with wings folded together, thick on the trees and shaggy as bearskin. [p. 244]

I had hope for my rough edges. I wanted to use them as a can opener, to cut myself a hole in the world's surface, and exit through it.

It should surprise no one that the life of the writer — such as it is — is colorless to the point of sensory deprivation. Many writers do little else but sit in small rooms recalling the real world. This explains why so many books describe the author's childhood. A writer's childhood may well have been the occasion of his only firsthand experience.