“Sudden singing was the only type I really missed. When sudden singing happened it came out of the blue and made me feel so good that my toes curled up and I got goose bumps all over my body and tears in my eyes.”

“Before everything happened I wished i had double voice box like a song bird so I could sing two songs at once, the way a bird can harmonize with itself. I wanted to sing crystal clear notes. I wanted to sing them one after anther in ascending order. And at the same time I wanted to let another fountain of notes descend from my heart.”

“The cicadas were singing a song.It was a one-noted, one-worded; The words sounded like "please".They were singing and singing and singing and the whole world was falling down.”

“It was only a little piece of knowledge but it felt as shiny and solid as a new twenty-cent piece in my hand to know i could find the thing that was wrong.”

“I would be a wedge-tailed eagle. I would only live for the joy of flight. I would soar at great heights, on top of the wind. I would be above everything, over the little towns clinging to the highway. I would be a part of everything.”

“Big secrets were catastrophic. However hard you try to hide them, they bob to the surface and you must go over them again and again. They are taken out so often they become worn smooth as a river stone. You have to carry them around you like a baby. The secret grows until you feel like you are a skin that covers it, a thin skin, easily split, ripe”

“All those days had been removed, simply and precisely, whole weeks brimming with cloudless blue skies neatly severed and discarded. We needed Beth's name shouted not whispered.”