“Whatever he writes will mean You have not silenced me. Despite all your power, you are not all powerful. Men have often reduced his voice to gasps and weeping. They have crushed the power to speak from his body, from many bodies. But words written down outlive the vulnerability of the flesh. His songs will fly through the air like swallows. Recorded words can be passed along. In one form or another, they will be passed along. Movement is their essential nature.”

“Ah, that shows you the power of music, that magician of magician, who lifts his wand and says his mysterious word and all things real pass away and the phantoms of your mind walk before you clothed in flesh.”

“And then one day he realised that of course he was always staring at his hand when he wrote, was always watching the pen as it moved along, gripped by his fingers, his fingers floating there in front of his eyes just above the words, above that single white sheet, just above these words i’m writing now, his fingers between him and all that, like another person, a third person, when all along you thot it was just the two of you talking and he suddenly realized it was the three of them, handling it on from one to the other, his hand translating itself, his words slipping thru his fingers into the written world. You.”

“I don't hear your words: your voice reverberates against my body like another kind of caress, another kind of penetration. I have no power over your voice. It comes straight from you into me. I could stuff my ears and it would find its way into my blood and make it rise.”

“A silent challenge passed between the powerful men, to be interrupted by the Queen, who spoke but one word-the Cokyrian commander's name. He looked to her more quickly than I would have believed possible, and his demeaner changed along with his focus, becoming softer, more cooperative... Perhaps she had more influence than I thought.”

“Writing begins in the body, it is the music of the body, and even if the words have meaning, can sometimes have meaning, the music of the words is where the meanings begin....Writing as a lesser form of dance.”