“I had to ask the burning question as we walked to the door. "How's it feel to throw a man off a building twenty stories up?""Good. Kind of liberating actually. Educational too. I never knew a man could scream so loud. Or so long.”

“Your dad's not dead." I winced. "In fact, isn't he some kind of big-shot union labor guy?" He nodded. "Yup. That's who they called. Dad confirmed he died this morning.”

“A shrill whistle scratched out of the dank cloud surrounding him. A second soon followed.„Two freighters are doing a whistle pass,“ Betty said behind him. „Is that how you intend to leave this, Gabriel? You and Mr. Harris were but two lonely hearts conducting a whistle pass through the fog of your lives?”

“Timothy's eyes followed the straight back, the high shoulders, and the crisp white hair out of the door and out of his life -- a man, so he was to write years later, the like of whom he was never to met again, "because he was the only man I ever knew who could use words like honour, duty, and responsibility without making me feel like throwing up."”

“I remember a man throwing me in the air when I was very little. He stands as tall as the sky, and he throws me up so high it feels as though I'm flying. We're both laughing, laughing so much that I could hardly catch a breath, and finally I laugh so hard I wet myself, but that only makes him laugh the louder. I was never afraid when he was throwing me. I knew that he would always be there to catch me.”

“Maybe this is not a come-down-from-the-ledge story. But I tell it with the thought that the woman on the ledge will ask herself a question, the question that occurred to that man in Bogota. He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good?”

“I let myself be led out, but at the doors of the Great Hall, I turned. "I will never forgive this," I swore, and Nefertiti knew it was meant for her. "I will never forgive this so long as the sun sets on Amarna!" I screamed.”