Here’s the fourth and last quote from the short story “Sonny’s Blues.”

“Sonny’s fingers filled the air with life, his life. But that life contained so many others…Then he began to make it his. It was very beautiful because it wasn’t hurried and it was no longer a lament. I seemed to hear with what burning he had made it his, with what burning we had yet to make it ours, how we could cease lamenting. Freedom lurked around us and I understood, at last, that he could help us to be free if we would listen, that he would never be free until we did…And I was yet aware that this was only a moment, that the world waited outside, as hungry as a tiger, and that trouble stretched above us, longer than the sky.”

Sometimes it seems as if the world’s always trying to strangle you, to push you, to test your strength. The world’s always rumbling on, waiting to swallow you whole. But if you allow yourself to close your eyes and really listen, everything else can truly melt away. Even if only for a moment.