“In the future, he will try to say her name enough, but he never can.”

“He was in love, and never had he felt such kindness towards another person.”

“Shy Carmen, always hanging back from the others, who knew she could smile? But at the sight of that smile he would have promised her anything. He was just barely awake. Or maybe he was not awake at all. Had he wanted her and not known it? Had he wanted her so much that he dreamed she was lying beside him now? The things our minds keep from us, Gen thought. The secrets we keep even from ourselves.”

“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.”

“He used to say we all had a compass inside of us and what we needed to do was to find it and to follow it.”

“He realized now he was only just beginning to see the full extent to which it was his destiny to follow, to walk blindly into fates he could never understand. In fate there was reward, in turning over one's heart to God there was a magnificence that lay beyond description. At the moment one is sure that all is lost, look at what is gained!”

“She's a nice girl," Tennessee said as a way of saying goodbye to them, as a way of saying thank you and I'm sorry, as a way of saying, I wish I had never let you go and I wish we had never met.”