“He'd never in his life heard music so unearthly. Perhaps it was the shale of the mountainsides, or the breath of cold fog on the river; whatever the reason, the music, by the time it reached Mickelsson, seemed nothing that human voices could conceivably produce. If stones were to sing, taking their own natural harmonies, or if the restless spirits of dead animals were to cry out, this might be their sound.”
More from John Gardner
“We read five words on the first page of a really good novel and we begin to forget that we…”
“I dreamed I awakened in a valley where no life stirred, no cry of a fox sparked up out of…”
“The old ram stands looking down over rockslides, stupidly triumphant.”
“Sometimes the sordidness of his present existence, not to mention the stifling, clammy…”