“Like how stars might sound. Or moons But not mountains. Too floaty for mountains. It's a sound like one planet singing to another, high stretched and full of different voices starting at different notes and sloping down to other different notes but all weaving together in a rope of sound that's sad but not sad and slow but not slow and all singing one word. One word.”

“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.”

“Her accent's funny, different from mine, different from anyone in Prentisstown's. Her lips make different kinds of outlines for the letters, like they're swooping down on them from above, pushing them into shape, telling them what to say. In Prentisstown, everyone talks like they're sneaking up on their words, ready to club them from behind.”

“And then a low and powerful sound rumbles thru the sky, like some giant, deep horn.A sound God would make when he wanted yer attenshun.”

“There was his father, looking totally different but exactly the same.“Hey, son,” his dad said, his voice bending in that weird way that America had started to shape it.”

“But I'm still thinking about being born on a spaceship, an honest to badness spaceship. Growing up while flying along the stars, able to go wherever you wanted, not stuck on some hateful planet which clearly don't want you. You could go anywhere. If one place didn't suit, you'd find another. Full freedom in all direkshuns. Could there possibly be anything cooler in the whole world than that?”

“The sound when we crash is so loud it's almost impossible.”