" It took only a few bars to assure her that Thomas Lynn was a very good cellist indeed. His playing had that drive to it which gave you the sense of the shape of the music opening out before him as he played. And he kept that drive and shape, whether the cello was grumbling against the piano, crisply duetting, or out on its own, coaxed into hollow golden song. That feeling of pattern being made, Polly thought, that I had in the pano. Except that this was so expert and so tried that it was hard to believe that it was being done with a musical instrument in somebody’s hands. (p. 360) "

― Diana Wynne Jones , Fire and Hemlock