"...He found a way to live with the aloneness, to say "Yes" when he asked himself if the Pearl would be worth the price he paid, day after day. Night after night. Year after year.

Who could speak of such things? Not Emilio Sandoz who, for all his facility with many languages, remained tongue-tied and inarticulate about the center of his soul.

For he could not feel God or approach God as a friend or speak to God with the easy familiarity of the devout or praise God with poetry.

And yet, as he had grown older, the path he had started down almost in ignorance had begun to seem clearer to him. It became more apparent to him that he was truly called to walk this strange and difficult , this unnatural and unutterable path to God, which required not poetry or piety but simple endurance and patience.

No one could know what this meant to him."

~ Mary Doria Russell, The Sparrow