“He squints at the screen. “So, would you call yourself a… hmmm, that doesn’t sound appropriate… a ‘nasty come hungry bottom dumpster bitch’?” I wish life was more like cartoons and a piano would fall on him and his teeth would become the piano keys as stars circled his head.”

“I wish the government would put a tax on pianos for the incompetent.”

“I tell you a secret about Chopin, piano is his best friend. More. He tells piano all his secrets.” - piano teacher Eleanora Sivan.”

“We knew - but didn't want to know - what was going to happen, the sky descending upon our heads like the shadow of a falling piano in a cartoon.”

“Are you waiting for someone to come and get you?” I whisper. I sound small and thirsty. He doesn’t answer. Instead, he bends his head and kisses me, just once, then let’s me go. When Connor would kiss Angelie in the halls last spring, he did it like he was trying to suck the chocolate off the outside of a Klondike bar. It could last for hours. This is more like seeing a star fall - thrilling and soundless and then over.”

“Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in bliss so that nothing but bubbles would dance on the surface of his bliss, as on a sea...and even then every man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive rationality his fatal fantastic element...simply in order to prove to himself that men still are men and not piano keys.”