“The air was unusually warm and humid and I wondered if everyone else associated that sensation with childhood, with bare feet and wet grass and fireflies and heat lightning, and repeated entreaties to come in for dinner.”

“...and thinking how the first scent of autumn is like coming across a lost album of childhood photographs.”

“I see her again: her face wet with tears, her eyes searching mine. Slowly, very slowly, I reach my hands out and trace my fingertips along her skin, first down her neck, so warm and fragile, then across her breasts and down along the curves of her hips. Then with all my strength I wrap my arms around her and pull her toward me, but she is gone.”

“I wonder if music is the only expression of the soul that is not hopelessly compromised in communication.”

“It was the chance--just the chance--to come fully alive; to love someone else so completely that you would never again feel alone. That was it, wasn’t it? The promise of being engulfed by love and passion and intimacy; to connect in a way that gently sutured together the souls.”

“Completely alive. I thought abut what she meant by that; about all the joy and wonder and passion that had slipped from her fingers.”

“I often wondered why men will risk almost certain death in an attempt to save other men. I decided it was because men will do anything to give their lives some meaning and virtue.”