“Alone, he saw the slanting waves roll in, Each to its impotent annihilation In a long wash of foam, until the sound Become for him a warning and a torture, Like a malign reproof reiterating In vain its cold and only sound of doom.”

“The harmony that holds the stars on their courses and the flesh on our bones resonates through all creation. Every sound contains its echo. Before there was humankind, or even forest, there was sound. Sound spread from the source in great circles like those formed when a stone is dropped in a pool.We follow waves of sound from life to life. A dying man’s ears will hear long after his eyes are blind. He hears the sound that leads him to his next life as the Source of All being plucks the harp of creation.”

“HOrrible. The most horrible sound on earth. The sound of death and torture and the agonies of a burning hell," Lisle said. "Damn them. It's bagpipes.”

“Rain woke him, a slow drizzle, his feet tangled in coils of discarded fiberoptics. The arcade's sea of sound washed over him, receded, returned. Rolling over, he sat up and held his head.”

“I am dying: it's a beautiful word. Like the long slow sigh of the cello: dying. But the sound of it is the only beautiful thing about it.”

“Sometimes it slanted against her window with a pinging sound, which meant it was close to hail, and then it was visible as tiny pellets for a moment on the pane before the pellets vanished and rolled quietly down the glass, each drop leaving its own delicate trickle. At other times it fell straight down, hardly touching the window at all, but still there beyond the glass, like a delicate, beaded curtain at the entrance to another room.”