“I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.”

“I have no use for a theoretic freedom. Let me have something finite, definite matter that can lend itself to my operation only insofar as it is commensurate with my possibilities. And such matter ...”

“I cannot now evaluate the events that, at the end of those thirty years, made me discover the necessity of religious belief. I was not reasoned into my disposition. Though I admire the structured t...”

“He was a six and a half foot scowl.(on Rachmaninov)”

“One lives by memory . . . and not by truth.”

“What force is more potent than love?”

“I finally know the difference between pleasing and loving, obeying and respecting. It has taken me so many years to be okay with being different, and with being this alive, this intense. (xxvi)”

“Spring passes and one remembers one's innocence.Summer passes and one remembers one's exuberance.Autumn passes and one remembers one's reverence.Winter passes and one remembers one's perseverance.”

“Birthdays could be such a bummer when you were older than the country you lived in.”

“The only time they ever throw anything away is when it's really and truly broken, and then they make a big deal about it. They save up all their bent pins and broken sewing needles and once a year ...”

“We were young. Everyone was young in those days. Thats the main complaint you hear from people who are getting old. You stop seeing young people. You begin to wonder if there are any left and wheth...”

“If only I had met Molly sooner, when it was still possible to choose one road rather than another. Before that bitch Musyne and that little turd Lola crimped my enthusiasm. But it was too late to s...”

“The land of easy mathematics where he who works adds up and he who retires subtracts.”

“At the age of 45, most days in Tucson were spent feeling like I was on the summit of Mauna Kea, as I was exhibiting debilitating health symptoms that corresponded to what I saw at very high altitud...”

“The hour is only long thus, if you've waited.”