“Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, orperhaps of subconsciousnessI wouldn't know. But I amsure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.”

“To stop the flow of music would be like the stopping of time itself, incredible and inconceivable.”

“So long as the human spirit thrives on this planet, music in some living form will accompany and sustain it and give it expressive meaning.”

“The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking, 'Is there a meaning to music?' My answer would be, 'Yes.' And 'Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?' My answer to that would b...”

“If a literary man puts together two words about music, one of them will be wrong.”

“Inspiration may be a form of super-consciousness, orperhaps of subconsciousness—I wouldn't know. But I amsure it is the antithesis of self-consciousness.”

“He hated to think of his own life stretching ahead of him that way, a long succession of days and nights that were fine - not good, not bad, not great, not lousy, not exciting, not anything.”

“He was fucking sad. That's it. That's the point. He knows life is never going to get any different for him. That there's no fixing him. It's always going to be the same monotonous depressing bullsh...”

“Sane is boring.”

“Those who work, knows the strength of labour.”

“I only have so much willpower, Helen," he whispered. "And since you apparently sleep in the most ridiculously transparent tank top I've ever seen, I'm going to have to ask you to get under the cove...”

“I'm infatuated with you, I cannot deny it. Physically speaking, you're a very attractive man. But I don't like you, the vast majority of the time. So far as I can gather, you behave abominably in p...”

“Tax not so bad a voice to slander music any more than once.”

“Difficult do you call it, Sir? I wish it were impossible. [on hearing a famous violinist]”

“He'd call me false and faithless and I've always had a weakness for those two words; next to cruel, they're the nicest words for a woman to hear, and not so hard to earn.”