" they filled her with the most astonishing sensation of synthesis-as though all the most disparate elements of her biography were at last knitting together. All the things that she had ever known or loved in the world were stitching themselves up and becoming one thing. Realizing this made her feel both unburdened and triumphant. She had that feeling again--of being most spectacularly alive. Not merely alive but outfitted with a mind that was functioning at the uppermost limits of its capacity--a mind that was seeing everything, and understanding everything, as though watching it all from the highest imaginable ridge. "

― Elizabeth Gilbert , The Signature of All Things