My fingers traced the melody on an invisible keyboard—my usual way to connect with the music, to feel its emotions on my fingertips. I touched the keys softly, as if gliding my hands through water, but the musical notes kept slipping between my fingers like bubbles, waltzing away in the blue radiance.

That’s the power you possess as an artist. To find and express your own unique message.

Life is a desert of shifting sand dunes. Unpredictable. Erratic. Harmony changes into dissonance, the immediate outlives the profound, esoteric becomes cliched. And vice versa.

A knife wound heals, but a tongue wound festers.

Destiny is a stubborn maiden. She likes herself just the way she is.

Jealousy knows neither morality nor empathy.

The conversation ran as fluidly as the tea out of the samovar’s crooked nose.