God knows how many things a man misses by becoming smug and assuming that matters will take their own course.

I love forms beyond my own, and regret the borders between us

There is nothing very 'normal' about nature.

Once in a lifetime, perhaps, one escapes the actual confines of the flesh. Once in a lifetime, if one is lucky, one so merges with sunlight and air and running water that whole eons, the eons that mountains and deserts know, might pass in a single afternoon without discomfort.

To have dragons one must have change; that is the first principle of dragon lore.

Though men in the mass forget the origins of their need, they still bring wolfhounds into city apartments, where dog and man both sit brooding in wistful discomfort. The magic that gleams an instant between Argos and Odysseus is both the recognition of diversity and the need for affection across the illusions of form. It is nature's cry to homeless, far-wandering, insatiable man: "Do not forget your brethren, nor the green wood from which you sprang. To do so is to invite disaster.

From the solitude of the wood, (Man) has passed to the more dreadful solitude of the heart.