“It wasn't right. He knew that, but it was like falling: once you started you couldn't stop until something stopped you.”

“You can't stop time. You can't capture light. You can only turn your face up and let it rain down.”

“So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else.”

“It seemed there was no end at all to the lies a person could tell, once she got started.”

“The thing is, I used to like that: feeling special because I knew something no one else did. It's a kind of power, isn't it, knowing a secret? But lately I don't like it so much, knowing this. It's not really mine to know, is it?”

“Music is like you touch the pulse of the world. Music is always happening, and sometimes you get to touch it for a while, and when you do you know that everything's connetcted to everything else.”

“There was in the mountains, and perhaps in the world at large, a theory of compensation that held that for everything given something else was immediately and visibly lost. "Well, you've got the smarts even if your cousin did get the looks." Compliments, seductive as flowers, thorny with their opposites: "Yes, you may be smart but you sure are ugly; You may look nice but you didn't get a brain." Compensation; balance in the universe.”