Top Highlights

• Realizing that the story is not completely “true” may lessen its interest for some readers. But while fiction makes it possible to refrain from revealing some secrets, it is the only way to reveal others.
• Brilliance and desolation appear intermittently in the record of their lives. Joy and sadness play tug-of-war. This is all the more reason why the alignment of their souls possesses a quality that is rare in today’s world—a quality that I shall call, if I may, beauty.
• “Music is born in opposition to the beauty of silence; the creation of music lies in the attempt to use sound to bring about new beauty that contrasts with the beauty of silence.”
• These days, musicians of every sort, and audiences too, were denied the experience of this rich silence. At any rate, there wasn’t enough time to simply lose oneself in it.
• In exchange for the privilege of life, individuals in the modern world put up with ceaseless clamor. Not only noises but images, smells, tastes, perhaps even the warmth of others . . . all of it rushing at them in a mad free-for-all, each bit screaming its presence.