“Did dreams, he wondered, when they arrived, make a sound? The smallest kind, like the noise of an embryo being conceived, or a snowflake touching down?”

“God doesn't like it when we ask Him for the smallest things, dare to make your dream so big that He can conveniently fit into it and make your dream come true.”

“Stupid speaks loudly; he makes noise like pigs! Wise man speaks calmly; he makes sound like quiet lakes!”

“It amazed me how some people could touch an instrument and create something so beautiful, and when others tried, like me, it just sounded like mangled noise.”

“So the crow spirals down through a collapsed dream and the only sound it makes in like a concave scream.”

“[Christopher:] You cannot conceive of the quantity of explosives the armies throw at each other for each man killed! The shells make a continuous noise, sometimes like an enormous machine breaking apart. At other times, they come whistling towards you in a thoughtful sort of way and then go crump and the screw cap flies off, hurtling through the air, screaming. There’s a kind of shell which comes with a crescendo like an express train, only faster. Another kind which makes a noise like tearing calico, louder and louder. The largest kind are the ones which burst in the sky and make a double crack, like a wet canvas being shaken out by a giant. Such immense explosions to kill such small, weak animals.”