“The air was stifling, but he liked it because it was stifling city air, full of excitingly unpleasant smells, dangerous music, and the distant sound of warring police tribes.”

“And in the air around her, the echo of all those stifled hearts, trapped spirits, fluttered and sighed and breathed.”

“Six years later my mother's absence remained in the air around us, a deafening silence that I had not learned to stifle with words.”

“The morning television had been martial music and generals, admirals, air marshals and police chiefs displaying crisp uniforms and chests full of medals. Carl wondered, as he did during every coup, what all the medals were for; there hadn’t been a war. Maybe they got them for showing up on time to the previous coup.”

“Love is like sounds, whose last reverberations / Hang on the leaves of strange trees, on mountains / As distant as the curving of the earth, / Where the snow hangs still in the middle of the air.-from "Love is Like Sounds”

“The smell of dead fish lingered in the air, and excited flies darted from fish to fish lapping up the decay.”