“Dead voices, lost sounds, forgotten noises, vibrations lockstepping into the abyss and now too distant ever to be recaptured!...What sort of arrows would be able to transfix such birds?”

“Shreave flicked away the dead mosquito. "Don't these things carry the bird flu too?""No Boyd, that would be a bird.”

“I learned that the day "The Viper's Drag" slipped from between my fingers. But whatever might be lost or broken or forgotten is nothing compared to the miraculous rebirth that occurs every time the needle hits the groove. Here is Fats Waller Himself, not dead but present, so present that he overwhelms the well-ordered precincts of the living room. The sound sprawls. What vibrates here has more life than any room.”

“I am again in the present and awake. I close my eyes and am desperately trying to recapture the childhood memory. Now, however, I have to cross an abyss….”

“But my whole body is one pain. I cannot stand on my legs anymore. I stagger. I fall back on my bed. My eyes close and fill with smarting tears. I want to be crucified on the wall, but I cannot. My body becomes heavier and heavier and filled with sharper pain. My flesh is enraged against me.I hear voices through the wall. The next room vibrates with a distant sound, a mist of sound which scarcely comes through the wall.I shall not be able to listen anymore, or look into the room, or hear anything distinctly. And I, who have not cried since my childhood, I cry now like a child because of all that I shall never have. I cry over lost beauty and grandeur. I love everything that I should have embraced.”

“God be thanked for books! they are the voices of the distant and the dead, and make us heirs of the spiritual life of past ages.”