“He would sit singing, his cheeks turning red above his whiskers; but his voice always came out deep and steady, like the sound of long ago, if long ago could make a sound instead of being forever lost and silent.”

“Once, he'd used it in song, but the songs in his heart had gone silent long ago, and he knew that one day so would his voice. A man with nothing inside him eventually had nothing to say.”

“A long time ago, the act of another put the dark in his veins, and it's been there ever since. The night he lost his true love, his heart and his brain became one, so that his heart was scheming and his brain was loving. 'That doesn't sound so bad', my dream-self thought, but suddenly I could feel it, and it was very bad indeed—for when a brain loves, it is only out of obsession, and when a heart schemes, it does not mean well.”

“Menyara's Creole accent was as thick as his mother's jar of refrigerated roux, and Nick loved the sound of it.He wasn't quite as pleased with his own. No matter how hard he tried to hide his accent, it always came out in certain words like "praline", "etouffee", "pecan", and any time he lost his temper. You could easily tell how mad he was by how Cajun he sounded. And if he started spewing all Cajun words, duck.”

“His voice sounded like molten metal. As if he had something thick at the back of his throat and it was making him sound deeper and richer than he actually was.”

“It was all so long ago and Stalin doesn't matter any more. Stalin lost his chic before you were born. Sex is always chic.”