“That soft but penetrating voice that caressed your ears and climbed through your brain like a vine.”

“I live with pain that is like a wound; if you touch me, you willdo me irreparable harm. Your caresses enfold me, like climbing vines on melancholy walls.”

“I don't hear your words: your voice reverberates against my body like another kind of caress, another kind of penetration. I have no power over your voice. It comes straight from you into me. I could stuff my ears and it would find its way into my blood and make it rise.”

“There exists a creature which is perfectly harmless; when it passes before your eyes you scarcely notice it and forget it again immediately. But as soon as it invisibly gets somehow into your ears, it develops there, it hatches, as it were, and cases have been known where it was penetrated even into the brain and has thriven devastatingly in that organ, like those pneumococci in dogs that gain entrance through the nose.This creature is one's neighbor.”

“A Wrackspurt . . . They’re invisible. They float in through your ears and make your brain go fuzzy,” she said. “I thought I felt one zooming around in here.”

“The tenth gift is Wisdom. Guiding your way, wisdom will lead you through knowledge to understanding. May you hear its soft voice.”