The Signature of All Things

by Elizabeth Gilbert

She loved him so deeply that it pained her. She was only just confessing this to herself. To lose him now would be an amputation. True,

She could not always identify whether the idea was chasing her, or whether she was chasing it.

Her mind was like a terrific repository of endless shelves, stacked with untold thousands of books and boxes, organized into infinite, alphabetized particulars.

“I will tell you why we have these extraordinary minds and souls, Miss Whittaker,” he continued, as though he had not heard her. “We have them because there is a supreme intelligence in the universe, which wishes for communion with us. This supreme intelligence longs to be known. It calls out to us. It draws us close to its mystery, and it grants us these remarkable minds, in order that we try to reach for it. It wants us to find it. It wants union with us, more than anything.”