“Mrs. Sussex said Byrons loss would grow more bearable. But here was the nub: he didnt want to lose his loss. Loss was all he had left of his mother. If time healed the gap, it would be as if shed n...”

“I actually hate Christmas," says Eileen. "Everybody has this idea you have to have a good time, like happiness comes in a ruddy packet." Her face is flushed with heat. "One time, I stayed in bed al...”

“I'm completely out of control, and I can hear the beginnings of the chant, get/out/, but now that I'm not being touched maybe I can master it and I shut the world out: separating an orange into ski...”

“Jim looks out the car window with his nose pressed to the glass. Sometimes he pretends to be asleep. Not because he is tired, but because he needs to be quiet.”

“All men's miseries derive from not being able to sit quiet in a room alone.”

“Quiet is here and all in me. ("Dress of White Silk")”

“To imbibe so much quiet is to become the music inside it.”

“...the souls of none of them were dead, but only sleeping; now and then they would waken, and these were cruel times.”

“Sleep, where in the waste is the wisdom?”

“If you can't turn off your thoughts, who cares how soft your pillow is?"- David King”