“XII sang his name instead of song;Over and over I sang his name:Backward and forward I sang it along,With my sweetest notes, it was still the same!I sang it low, that the slave-girls nearMight never guess, from what they could hear,That all the song was a name.”

“He’d heard many songs in his life, sang thousands of them himself, but the sweetest music imaginable played for him in that moment: the sound of Sophie—the woman of his dreams—calling out his name, over and over again as together they reached their peak.”

“Silver” is what I called girls who were natural beauties but who also smoothed on a layer of pretty from a jar. It wasn’t just how they looked, it was how they were. The name came from a song my mother sang sometimes when she was getting dressed to go out somewhere special. She sang along with Aretha Franklin at the end: “Sail on, silver girl… Your time has come to shine. All your dreams are on their way.”

“And what was the song which she sang? Ah, my little man, I am too old to sing that song, and you too young to understand it.”

“The clouds wept when my heart sang a song of sorrow”

“Astrud Gilberto sang an old bossa nova song. “Take me to Aruanda,” she sang. I closed my eyes, and the clatter of the cups and saucers sounded like the roar of a far-off sea. Aruanda—what’s it like there?”