There are no simple words. I don't know why I thought I could hide anything behind language. - Patricia A. McKillip

I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.

The small red eyes regarded him, unblinking. “What would you give me for all the wisdom of the world?” “Nothing.” He turned back to his work. “I have heard you know the answers to every riddle save one. That will be the one I need answering.”

Words, he decided, were inadequate at best, impossible at worst. They meant too many things. Or they meant nothing at all.