“...he brought music of his own, and awakened every fairy echo with the tender accents of his oboe...”

“The voice of a rebeck echoed from somewhere behind him. The music echoed and echoed until it entered his head, still echoing. It suffused his body and he felt himself to be large, very large, not a child at all. And his skin was not his own.”

“He walked on in silence, the solitary sound of his footsteps echoing in his head, as in a deserted street, at dawn. His solitude was so complete, beneath a lovely sky as mellow and serene as a good conscience, amid that busy throng, that he was amazed at his own existence; he must be somebody else's nightmare, and whoever it was would certainly awaken soon.”

“He exuded ambiguities she decided, that was his fascination.His mouth spoke; his eyes said something other: his smile belied everything....He played with the language of the Circle of Days like a child with an arsenal of twigs.... His music said otherwise it seemed to echo through time out of a past as old as the stones on the hill. He lied with every note he played. Or in his music he finally told the truth.”

“To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone else's music, an actor of a part that has not been written for him.”

“His touch was like a bard's on his instrument, and it awakened a deep and mysterious music in my body.”