“If we put a gun to her head she would sing all day. Try it first with a bird, General Benjamin said gently to Alfredo. Like our soprano, they have no capacity to understand authority. The bird doesn't know enough to be afraid and the person holding the gun will only end up looking like a lunatic.”

“It was nothing like Roxanne singing, where it seemed that everyone's heart would have to wait until she finished before it could beat again.”

“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.”

“Maybe there would be a bad outcome for some of the others, but no one was going to shoot a soprano.”

“Our friendship was like our writing in some ways. It was the only thing that was interesting about our otherwise dull lives. We were better off when we were together. Together we were a small society of ambition and high ideals. We were tender and patient and kind. We were not like the world at all.”

“Well, you can't tell it from looking at him....It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.”

“Love is a rebellious bird that no one can tame”