“The sound of the pages turning was the sound of magic. The dry liquid feel of paper under fingertips was what magic felt like.”

“Death, jewelry, or magic; it sounded like Valentine's Day.”

“Tiff needed the words on the page to become the voice in her head, her own voice, or an approximation of it, and she needed the paper and the sound of the scratch of her chapped fingertips against it as she fiddled with each page.”

“The sound of shuffling pages filled the room like a delicate rainstorm falling on dried leaves.”

“Because homeland is one of the magical fantasy words like unicorn and soul and infinity that have now passed into the language. And the particular magic of homeland, its particular spell over irie, was that it sounded like a beginning. The beginningest of beginnings. Like the first morning of Eden and the day after apocalypse. A blank page. (p.332)”

“But this didn't feel like magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt like music.”