“...And there it went, the burden of her lifetime, taken.”

“Because of her singing they all went away feeling moved, feeling comforted, feeling, perhaps, the slightest tremors of faith.”

“Marina Singh: "You went to Radcliffe."Annick Swenson: "I didn't love it.”

“No one could see her objectively anyway. Even those who saw her for the first time, before she had opened her mouth to sing. Found her radiant, as if her talent could not be contained in her voice and so poured like light though her skin. Then all that could be seen was the weight and the gloss of her hair and the pale pink of her cheeks and her beautiful hands.”

“A pain exploded up high in her chest and spit her out of this terrible world.”

“Like her mother and all her mother's people before her, those inexhaustible blondes who staked their claims in verdant prairies, Marina was cut from Minnesota, the soil and the starry night. Instead of growing up inquisitive and restless, she had developed a profound desire to stay, as if her center of gravity was so low it connected her directly to this particular patch of earth.”

“Far outside the city the tree frogs were calling her, and the deep, rhythmic pulse of their voices set the blood flow to her heart.”