“TV sounds are all the same; there's no difference between the sound of the wind in Northern Ireland and the wind on a Polynesian island.”

“I learned two important things about the sound I was searching for: that it had to be indirect, refracted or muffled in some way; and that the sound had to give the impression that it would continue forever- the sound of someone practicing piano heard faintly from an unknown direction, or the sound of gentle rain outside a window, punctuated by drops falling on the casement.”

“there's always something in miso soup”

“She's like smoke:you think you're seeing her clearly enough,but when you reach for her there's nothing there”

“They needed a reason why a little kid would commit murder, someone or something to point the finger at, and I think they were relieved when they hit upon horror movies as the culprit. But there's no reason a child commits murder, just as there's no reason a child gets lost. What would it be - because his parents weren't watching him? That's not a reason, it's just a step in the process.”

“In heated rooms, he often felt the outlines of his body, the border between him and the external world, grow disturbingly fuzzy.”

“... The type of loneliness where you need to keep struggling to accept a situation is fundamentally different than the sort you know you'll get through if you just hang in there”