"Aside from recurrence, revision, and commensurate symbolic reference, echoes also reveal emptiness. Since objects always muffle or impede acoustic reflection, only EMPTY spaces can create echoes of lasting clarity..." (p. 46)

" Ironically, hollowness only increases the eerie quality of otherness inherent in any echo. Delay and fragmented repetition create a sense of another inhabiting a necessarily deserted place. Strange then how something so uncanny and outside the self, even ghostly as some have suggested, can at the same time also contain a resilient comfort: the assurance that even if it is imaginary and at best the product of a wall, there is still something else out there, something to stake out in the face of nothingness." (p. 46)

"When a pebble falls down a well, it is gratifying to hear the eventual plunk. If, however, the pebble only slips into darkness and vanishes without a sound, the effect is disquieting. In the case of a verbal echo, the spoken word acts as the pebble and the subsequent repetition serves as the 'plunk'. In this way, speaking can result in a form of seeing." (p. 46, 47)

"Myth makes echo the subject of longing and desire. Physics makes echo the subject of distance and design. Where emotion and reason are concerned both claims are accurate. And where there is no echo there is no description of space or love. There is only silence" (p. 50)