The old teacher said it best, about his own teaching: it is a raft. You lash it together, you cross the river, and then — only a fool straps the raft to his back and carries it the rest of his life in gratitude. These chapters were a raft. If they carried you even one stretch of water, you should feel free — feel encouraged — to forget every sentence. Do not quote this book. Do not believe this book; I asked that of you at the start and I hold it now at the end. The moment these pages become one more doctrine to defend, one more identity to wear — I am the kind of person who has read the deep things — they will have joined the dream’s wardrobe, and you must drop them.

Whatever was true in here, you cannot lose, because it was never in here. It was in you, recognizing itself — that quiet stir at certain sentences, the sense I told you at the start to test every page against. That stir does not stay in books. It goes with you. It is you.