“She had forgotten about this, the narcotic of the crowd. This is why you came to hear music. To stop being yourself, to let that thing that you supposedly were go, and just be part of a mob, synchr...”

“He was obsessed with obituaries. She'd never read them before, he couldn't believe it, to him it was like someone who'd never read the funnies...Michael always wanted to know what they died of- acc...”

“A month ago she would have been embarrassed at the confidence. Now she felt a surprising kinship. She was a citizen of the new land, a country she had never before visited, only a rumor, this vast ...”

“Michael, in a motel in Twentynine Palms, a gun in his hands. Not at Meredith's, painting in an explosion of new creation. Not over on Sunset, digging through the record bins, or at Launderland sepa...”

“Meredith's father, the composer, who shot himself in this house. Came all the way from Vienna to shoot himself in LA. Escaped the Nazis but not himself.”

“She wished Michael had had a grandfather like this guy Morty, someone to tell him, "It's a rotten deal, the house always wins. Just sit at the table and play for all you're worth." Instead of one w...”

“To create art with all the passion in one's soul is to live art with all the beauty in one's heart.”

“art is risk made visible”

“Eleanor was right. She never looked nice. She looked like art, and art wasn't supposed to look nice; it was supposed to make you feel something.”

“The best incentive for an artist are the harshest criticism”

“I have no idea how to be an artist and a lover, so I chose the one most likely to make me happy when I'm eighty and gazing back on a long and productive life.”

“Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice.”