"Rumi teaches the opening heart. Rumi says that whatever was said to the rose was said to me here in my chest. The implication being that for 
something to open into its own beauty and handsomeness, it has to be talked to. And so that idea of a human being as a dialogue—maybe an inaudible dialogue—is part of his model for what a human being is. He says we are a conversation between the one who takes bodily form and something else that is flowing through that was never born and doesn't die. So that intersection, that conversation is what a human being is. I just love that, because it's like we're both parts of the synapse."
~ Coleman Barks, from “A Valentine to the World,” a BookPage interview with Linda Stankard
