"When the recess bell had rung, the partners had laughed and slapped gently at each other with pleasure, then wound up the ropes. They had gone back into the school building with their arms slung across each other's shoulders. For a while, Yolanda liked to remember that. She liked to pretend that those girls had been her friends" (Page 20-21).

"True genius rearranges old material in a way never seen before" (Page 37).

"A broken cry scratched at his throat and it seemed to him that it came from the little heap of battered wood and metal where it lay on the asphalt" (Page 65).

"Andrew never thought the harmonica was a toy. It was part of him like his hands and his mouth, like his ears. It let him tell things. It was his power, like muscles" (Page 76).

"Andrew wet the wood with his tongue, wept into the wooden...