“It seemed hardly feasible that anyone could tune an oil barrel, and even less credible that the barrel could make music like nothing else in the world. She thought those sounds were magic.”

“There is nothing quite like the cold taste of gun oil on a stainless steel barrel to bring your life into focus. ”

“Music is nothing else but wild sounds civilized into time and tune.”

“Did the barrel aim so that eh eye could fire?”

“This very pride in keeping his word was that he was keeping it to miscreants. It was his last triumph over these lunatics to go down into their dark room and die for something that they could not even understand. The barrel-organ seemed to give the marching tune with the energy and the mingled noises of a whole orchestra; and he could hear deep and rolling, under all the trumpets of the pride of life, the drums of the pride of death.”

“She had a voice so husky it could have pulled a dogsled, and the gun she was holding gave me a bad case of barrel envy.”