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

“Ah, well, then you've never stood on a beach as the waves came crashing in, the water stretching out from you until it's beyond sight, moving and blue and alive and so much bigger than even the black beyond seems because the ocean hides what it contains.”

“Cuz when I held you for the first time this morning and fed you from my own body, I felt so much love for you it was almost like pain, almost like I couldn't stand it one longer.”

“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.”

“But then I think Viola -I think of her out there -And I push it back -I feel my hands on the floor -I use them to rise to my knees -I lift my head -To see the Mayor's surprised face only a yard or so away, coming toward me, something in his hand-"Goodness," he says, sounding almost cheerful. "Even stronger than I thought.”

“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.”

“Almost like being in the nightmare, that same feverish blur of the world slipping off its axis, but this time he was the one in control, this time he was the nightmare.”