“Without music and dance, life is a journey through a desert.”

“But no one walks out of his family without reprisals: a family is too disciplined an army to offer compassion to its deserters.”

“Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”

“You do not learn how to write novels in a writing program. You learn how by leading an interesting life. Open yourself up to all experience. Let life pour through you the way light pours through leaves.”

“Carolina beach music," Dupree said, coming up on the porch. "The holiest sound on earth.”

“I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.”

“Once you have traveled, the voyage never ends, but is played out over and over again in the quietest chambers. The mind can never break off from the journey.”