“Writing is always a process of discovery - I never know the end,or even the events on the next page, until they happen. There is a constant interplay between the imagining and shaping of the story.”

“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.”

“That there were other worlds, invisible, unknown, beyond imagination even, was a revelation to him.”

“There was so much force and beauty in the windows, such unsettled sadness in what little I knew of Rose's life, all her longing, her distance from her daughter. Just knowing she had existed opened new and uneasy possibilities within my understanding of the story I'd always thought I'd known by heart. ... Whoever Rose had been, she was gone, unable to speak for herself, fading into the past as surely as these rainy colors were diffusing, even now [p. 142].”

“I imagine that she flushes, seeing him there, for she is at that age when even the most commonplace boys take on a sense of mystery. And this boy is not ordinary. He is wild and he has strange and fanciful perceptions. [p. 153]”

“He had never even glimpsed her.”

“Each letter has a shape, she told them, one shape in the world and no other, and it is your responsibility to make it perfect.”