Loneliness shouldn't surprise us

Yes, alone we are, deeply alone, and always, in store for us, a layer of loneliness even deeper. There is nothing we can do to dispose of that. No, loneliness shouldn't surprise us, as astonishing to experience as it may be. You can try turning yourself inside out, but all you are then is inside out and lonely instead of inside in and lonely.

Philip Roth, American Pastoral

Fed and feeding, reading and being read

Reading, for me, is the proof of being at home: a quintessential part of the equation that enables us to reach across the fence between the world and ourselves without destroying what we find. The most basic parts of that equation, surely, are eating and being eaten. Can't have one without the other. May not seem so at the restaurant or the bookstore, but walking in the forest or sitting by the stream, we know it works both ways; being fed and feeding, reading and being read.

Robert Bringhurst, foreword to The Tree of Meaning