“The passing time is painful. I have lost the art of moving simply, naturally, within it. I am swept back against its flow. Angry, vindictive, it pierces me all the time, all the time with its spikes.”

“One of the greatest skills any leader can master is becoming comfortable with silence.”

“again, her singing was her only absolute, the only thing that was completely her. a thousand classes hadn't given her this concrete insight: her voice was her place in the world, the home she leaves in the morning and returns to at night, in which she can be herself in her entirety and hope to be loved for all that she is and in spite of all she is.”

“and suddenly I am washed over by a wave of happiness for it, for my little story, because it is a place, a home even, and I can go back to it from wherever I am”

“More than anything, more than anything she had with him, she missed the language they had invented, the likes of which she had never had nor would again. The thoughts and ideas he had birthed in her, his golden touch, and the words that erupted from her and became sparks of light to him.”

“The passing time is painful. I have lost the art of moving simply, naturally, within it. I am swept back against its flow. Angry, vindictive, it pierces me all the time, all the time with its spikes.”