“The reality of the pole bean or of the porcupine is never their momentary presence. It is the sense of the cycle which is the life of the bean, from planting to bearing, or of the porcupine through all the stages of his life. Words do not merely mirror — they reach beneath the transient surface to grasp the enduring reality it manifests. So, too, with the sense of a human life. Words are the way in which the sense, the very reality of that life, emerges through the manifold doings of the seasons.”

-Erazim Kohák