“My fear for you outweighs my fear of him, he said simply. And I told you, didnt I? If you left, Id follow you.But should you try to leave on your own, know that I will go to the ends of the earth t...”

“the longer you silence a violin, the harder it is for it to find its true voice again.”

“Free the fire fluttering inside her rib cage. Work her muscles, the bow, the violin, until she played herself to ash and embers and left the rest of the world behind to smolder.”

“Like any girl, she still felt the echoes from earlier eras of repression. She'd been raised by a mother who'd fought hard to get a wage she deserved, to have access to education when she lacked eve...”

“What mattered was that these beliefs had swept through the souls of everyone else like a plague. He couldn't see the end of it. Even a hundred years in the future, he knew, the roots still had not ...”

“Etta saw the way Sophia took a deep breathe, set her shoulders back, and moved with practiced grace on her way out and she understood something about the other girl, truly understood for the first...”

“Hard work is a prison sentence only if it does not have meaning.”

“I knew right then that I wanted to be a part of something that meaningful. I wanted to have something I was so passionate about that I'd be willing to risk everything for it. I wanted to know that ...”

“Do it with passion or not at all.”

“Remember when Japan was cool? We used to run around with 'Mr. Roboto' on our Walkmans, 'The Karate Kid' in our Betamaxes and wore T-shirts embossed with the characters for 'storm sewer' and 'dishwa...”

“I've always been a reserved cat. When I play sports, there's people used to get mad at me because I didn't hang out and things like that. I've never been that kind of person. Nothing has changed in...”

“You have to find what makes you stable in the storm. Then, no matter what's happening round you, no matter what the hype or the publicity, you can still manage to make leaps in your work as an artist.”