“I cannot perch among those who think that I am broken.”

“I spent that many years thinking I was alone. Then you prance into my life, nearly giving me a paroxysm, and now you deign to tell me there are more.”

“Who will kiss you? Who will rock you to sleep?" His voice was slow, drowsy."You never did," I said, trying to tease him. "You were more father to me than my father, but you never did that.""Someone should. Someone should love you. I will bite him if he will not.”

“For a fleeting instant, in the sad curve of his shoulders, I saw what Comonot could not: the core of decency; the weight he had carried so long; the endless struggle to do right in the wake of this irreversible wrong; the grieving husband and frightened father; the author of all those love songs. For the first time, I understood.”

“That’s the secret to performance: conviction. The right note played tentatively still misses its mark, but play boldly and no one will question you. If one believes there is truth in art – and I do – then it’s troubling how similar the skill of performing is to lying. Maybe lying is itself a kind of art. I think about that more than I should.”

“I was half lawyer; I always noticed the loopholes.”

“I became the very air; I was full of stars. I was the soaring spaces between the spires of the cathedral, the solemn breath of chimneys, a whispered prayer upon the winter wind. I was silence,and I was music, one clear transcendent chord rising toward Heaven. I believed, then, that I would have risen bodily into the sky but for the anchor of his hand in my hair and his round soft perfect mouth.”