“When nations resort to arms, the human spirit is like a bird that cannot stand to hear its own song.”

“When I'm writing, I'm waiting to see somebody, and I'm waiting to hear them. It's almost like conjuring spirits out of the air, using your own imaginative instability.”

“The greatness of a nation is not the military power to enforce its will upon others, but rather its capacity to inspire high ideals and a humanizing spirit.”

“All night I dreamt of bonfires and burn piles and ghosts of men, and spirits behind those birds of flame. I cannot tell anymore when a door opens or closes, I can only hear the frame saying, Walk through.”

“If you listen, you can hear it.The city, it sings.If you stand quietly, at the foot of a garden, in the middle of the street, on the roof of a house.It's clearest at night, when the sound cuts more sharply across the surface of things, when the song reaches out to a place inside you.It's a wordless song, for the most, but it's a song all the same, and nobody hearing it could doubt what it sings. And the song sings the loudest when you pick out each note.”

“The bird music sank into her, like a song you used to know but forgot long ago. You hear a piano play it some day, and for a minute you feel a happy pain, but you don't know why. Bird felt like that.”