He pressed himself into me and kissed my neck, and it was as if everything strong and solid inside me, heart and bones and muscle and gut, softened and melted from the heat of him.

I play until my fingers are blue and stiff from the cold, and then I keep on playing. Until I'm lost in the music. Until I am the music--notes and chords, the melody and harmony. It hurts, but it's okay because when I'm the music, I'm not me. Not sad. Not afraid. Not desperate. Not guilty.

They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper.

Come on you raver, you seer of visions, come on you painter, you piper, you prisoner, and shine.

There is an advantage to be found in most everything that happens to you, even if it is not immediately apparent.

The King walks. He nods. His glance is like God's touch - under it all things spring to life. A wave of his hand and a hundred musicians tear into the Handel, making a sound you've never heard before, and never will again. A sound that goes through you, through flesh and bone, and reorders the very beat of your heart.

Cripes Miss Wilcox, they're not guns,' I said. No, they're not Mattie, they're books. And a hundred times more dangerous.