“the whisper of space being compressed.”

“All the events of his life were compressing to singularity: one night, one hour.”

“Hope was a sunrise, a friend in the alley, a whisper in an empty corridor.”

“Between them was fifteen or so feet of frozen space, bounded by his window and hers, but it was as if the windows had liquefied, or else the air had, and his vision skewed and rippled and it was all he could do to put the Newport into gear and ease forward to let the next car in.”

“So many human beings, none of them seeing clearly.”

“She said being able to give life was not something anyone should take for granted.”

“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?”