“To look at the paper is to raise a seashell to one's ear and to be overwhelmed by the roar of humanity.”

“I knowit’s stupid to not own a gun yet haveso many triggers, but in some other worldgigantic seashells hold humansto their ears and listen to the echoof machines.”

“I had one elegantly folded cookie—a short paper nerve baked in an ear.”

“He wanted to die. He prayed for it. Through the roar in his ears, he begged for it.”

“There is much pain that is quite noiseless; and vibrations that make human agonies are often a mere whisper in the roar of hurrying existence. There are glances of hatred that stab and raise no cry of murder; robberies that leave man or woman forever beggared of peace and joy, yet kept secret by the sufferer—committed to no sound except that of low moans in the night, seen in no writing except that made on the face by the slow months of suppressed anguish and early morning tears. Many an inherited sorrow that has marred a life has been breathed into no human ear.”

“She had stood there with the phone pressed to her ear as though it were a huge plastic seashell, all the unhappy years of her marriage echoing again in her eardrums, washing up in the coils of her memory.”