“She loved the way her city always sounded like it was celebrating.”

“It seems that most the world is driven by the eye, right? They design cities to look great but they always sound horrible, ... They design telephones to look great, but they sound horrible. I think it was about time that the other senses were celebrated.”

“The city atmosphere certainly has improved her. Some way she doesn't seem like the same woman.”

“He was always part of her thoughts, and now that he was real, he was inescapably part of her life, but it was as she had told her mother: saying he was part of her or that they were more than friends sounded like love, but it seemed like loss as well. All the words she knew to describe what he was to her were from love stories and love songs, but those were not words anyone truly meant.”

“Remember Old Nan's stories, Bran. Remember the way she told them, the sound of her voice. So long as you do that, part of her will always be alive in you.”

“How did I love her?Let me count the ways.The freckles on her nose like the shadow of a shadow; the way she chewed on her lower lip when she walked and how when she ran she looked like she was born going fast and how she fit perfectly against my chest; her smell and the touch of her lips and her skin, which was always warm, and how she smiled.Like she had a secret.How she always made up words during Scrabble. Hyddym (secret music). Grofp (cafeteria food). Quaw (the sound a baby duck makes). How she burped her way through the alphabet once, and I laughed so hard I spat out soda through my nose.And how she looked at me like I could save her from everything bad in the world.This was my secret: she was the one who saved me.”