"It was as if God had said, 'I am here, but not as you have known me. This is the look of silence, and of loneliness unendurable; it too has always been mine, and now will be yours.' I was not ready for a life of sorrow, sorrow deriving from knowledge I could just as well stop at the gate."
~ Annie Dilliard, "A Field of Silence" in Teaching a Stone To Talk...