“The white noise from the old Walkman enveloped them both; like a blanket of new snow, it draped itself over them, shutting out all the curious looks.And the world under the blanket was - surprisingly, wonderfully - absolutely, quiet.”

“They saw him walk away, leave a world he'd never really been part of. They saw him pull his hat down low and get onto his bike. He forgot the Walkman's earplugs. Maybe, Anna thought, he didn't need them anymore; maybe the white noise had finally made it into his head.”

“And the snow that fell onto the roof in winter... it fell softly... softly... and it covered the house, the armchair, the books, the children's voices. It covered Anna and Abel, covered their parallel world, and everything was finally, very, very quiet.”

“And she imagined how things could be later. It was stupid, but the picture just appeared in her mind. Abel and Magnus shoveling snow together... in twenty years, in thirty. Magnus had grown old, his broad back still strong but bent from time, his hair nearly white at the temples. And Abel... Abel was a different Abel, an adult one, one who was absolutely self-confident and didn't let his eyes dart around the room at lunch, as if he were caught in trap. "Nonsense," she whispered. "Thirty years? You don't stay with the person you meet at seventeen... what kind of fairy tale are you living in, Anna Leemann?" And still the picture seemed right.”

“It was a disaster … It was the most wonderful thing in the world.”

“There was the place where all the shouted words fall into the water. They’re too weak to make it from shore to shore. I saw the words underwater, millions of them; they’re lying there on the bottom of the sea, a whole load of wrecked sentences, sentences that never reached their destination, questions from one side and answers from the other…”

“I'm doing a thousand new things in spite of myself," he said. "It's not easy, you know, to jump over your shadow.”