“The air felt suddenly shared. The man above was a word they seemed to know, though they had not heard it before.”

“The watchers below pulled their breath in all at once. The air suddenly felt shared. The man above was a word they seemed to know, though they had not heard it before.”

“The core reason for it all was beauty. Walking was a divine delight. Everything was rewritten when he was up in the air. New things were possible with the human form. It went beyond equilibrium. He felt for a moment uncreated. Another kind of awake.”

“I told him that I loved him and that I'd always love him and I felt like a child who throws a centavo into a fountain and then she has to tell someone her most extraordinary wish even though she knows that the wish should be kept secret and that, in telling it, she is quite probably losing it. He replied that I was not to worry, that the penny could come out of the fountain again and again and again.”

“...it was necessary to love silence, but before you could love silence you had to have noise.”

“There would always be an expletive in a New York sentence. Even from a judge. Soderberg was not fond of bad language, but he knew its value at the right time. A man on a tightrope, a hundred and ten stories in the air, can you possibly fucking believe it?”

“...while the others--those who wanted him to stay, to hold the line, to become the brink, but no farther--felt viable now with disgust for the shouters: they wanted the man to save himself, step backward into the arms of the cops instead of the sky.”