“There are melodies that speak as eloquently as words, that flow logically and inevitably from a single, pure emotion.”

“Metaphor is awkward, but emotion, by its nature, leaves you no more scalable approach.”

“If I could keep a single moment for all time, that would be the one. I became the very air; I was full of stars.”

“Please, Orma, I’ve already gotten you in so much trouble—” “That I can’t possibly get into more. Take it.” He wouldn’t stop glaring at me until I’d put the earring back on its cord. “You are all that’s left of Linn. Her own people won’t even say her name. I—I value your continued existence.” I could not speak; he had pierced me to my very heart.”

“...it's as if I have just solved Skivver's predictive equations, or even better, as if I have intuited the One Equation, seen the numbers behind the moon and the stars, behind mountains and history, art and death and yearning, as if my comprehension is large enough that it can encompass universes, from the beginning to the end of time.”

“Have you read Belondweg?""I coudn't call myself much of a scholar if I hadn't," he said.He was adorable and he made me smile, but I couldn't let him see.”

“A feeling rose in me, and I just let it, because what harm could it do? It only had another thirty-two adagio bars of life in this world. Twenty-four. Sixteen. Eight more bars in which I love you. Three. Two. One.”