“She was a beefy young woman and, whatever piece of music she was playing, it was definitely losing.”

“My second wife - I was still young then - she left me, and I made the mistake of winning her back. It took me years to lose her again after that. She was a good woman. It is not easy to lose a good woman. If one must marry it is better to marry a bad woman.”

“So often, she had found herself transported by music. She would get lost, lose herself to the time and fullness of the tones, the way it conjured up air around her as she listened or as she played. But this, she thought, one did not get lost in this music.One was delivered by it.”

“Music is my mistress, and she plays second fiddle to no one.”

“The Girl was gone, buried in the past. She never wanted to hear that name again. She was a woman for better for worse. Whatever the future might bring she could face it as a woman, Ned Ridley's woman.”

“Every time a person goes to the mall, she loses a little piece of her soul”