“He never labored so hard to learn a language as he did to hold his tongue, and it affected him for life. The habit of reticence — of talking without meaning — is never effaced.”

“Sometimes, immersed in his books, there would come to him the awareness of all that he did not know, of all that he had not read; and the serenity for which he labored was shattered as he realized the little time he had in life to read so much, to learn what he had to know.”

“Music really did mean something to him, he realized, and it always had. It called to him, although there were no words to describe what it promised. It was like a secret language he never forgot how to speak, a hometown he could always return to when he tired of what life was throwing at him.”

“He must have loved her so incredibly hard. So hard that he would never ask for her lips again and would go to his grave without them.”

“I will never see him again. Never know why he let me go. Never learn if he really whispered what I think he did. Beautiful.”

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.”