“In a span of months she had present for birth and for death, the wondrous first breath and the horrible last. But wasn't it an honor to be there at the end of life as well as the beginning? To mark the extraordinariness of a lifetime, to bear witness to its completion?”

“Honor from death,” I snap, “is a myth. Invented by the war torn to make sense of the horrific. If we die, it will be so that others may live. Truly honorable death, the only honorable death, is one that enables life.”

“My heart wasn't big enough to hold everything I felt, but I couldn't bear the thought of asking him to wait while I caught up.”

“Ends Meet1Could betime is practice,balance,the actionexecuted in the mindbefore and after.Where does mind end?2We mark a breakwith what has come before,come through the door,down the hatch.Not a clean breakexactly.3Our life was rehearsal,Mother almost saidso that we believedwe would escort herto the futurewhere she could be happy.”

“Breathing in the scent of his hair, I realized I'd needed him my whole life, before we even met. First, his music and the way he taught me through books and recordings. Then, he saved my life and refused to abandon me no matter how much I deserved it.”

“Who am I?" My first spoken words."No one," she said. "Nosoul.”

“Sam hauled open the library door."There you are!" Whit pushed up from the desk he'd been hunched over. "We thought you two had given up on us.""Unlike some people I know," I said, removing my mittens and scarf, "we don't live here.""She says that now." Sam followed me toward Whit's and Orrin's desks, where they worked over flat electronic screens. "But the first thing she said when I showed her the library was that we should move in."Orrin lifted an eyebrow, oddly delicate for someone so large. "The acoustics would be terrible.”