Music is like you touch the pulse of the world. Music is always happening, and sometimes you get to touch it for a while, and when you do you know that everything's connetcted to everything else.

So something had begun, and now she could not stop it. Twin threads ran through her: fear and excitement. She could leave this place today. She could start a new life somewhere else.

She saw herself moving through another life, an exotic, difficult, satisfying life.

Its impossible to control the reception of your work - the only thing you can control is the experience of writing itself, and the work you create.

Lately, the world felt fragile, like a blown egg, as if it might shatter beneath a careless touch.

Once, this whole world had been hidden beneath a shallow sea.

The city of Pittsburgh gleaming suddenly before her . . . so startling in its vastness and its beauty that she had gasped and slowed, afraid of losing control of the car