“Out of silence I begin to hear the voices of characters whispering snippets of a story to me.”

“In my head I hear a whisper, or rather the memory of a whisper. The familiar voice is soft, and it warms me from the inside out as it murmurs a name: Charlotte.”

“Her voice was preserved. Out of the millions that were silenced, this voice was no louder than a child's whisper... It has outlasted the shouts of the murders and has soared above the voices of time.”

“Reading was what I needed to beat back all that noise and silence, those horrible silences. . . .An ink pen was the only way to carve a voice out of the air and have others hear it.”

“I strain to hear, but my old ears, for all their obscene hugeness, pick up nothing but snippets:”

“People often ask me questions that I cannot very well answer in words, and it makes me sad to think they are unable to hear the voice of my silence.”