“If she could breathe then it could be heard, but she was breathless.”

“Once, when she was six years old, she had fallen from a tree, flat on her stomach. She could still recall that sickening interval before breath came back into her body. Now, as she looked at him, she felt the same way she had felt then, breathless, stunned, nauseated.”

“She worked diligently to develop her understanding of breath; for she knew that with breath she could create a world. She imagined herself breathing life into the glass and, with every week that passed, Sei came closer to realizing the loveliness of the objects that she could picture in her imagination.”

“She could look at him forever. She could spend her life watching him just blink and breathe that near to her.”

“There was nothing she could say to them--nothing would be heard or answered. What were the weapons, she thought, in a realm where reason was not a weapon any longer? It was a realm she could not enter.”

“Could she smell my breath? Could she hear my cursed circular heart beat revolving like the crime it is in my deathly chest?”