All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.

If asked to list my ten favorite American fiction writers, Gail Godwin would be among them. In this, her latest . . . she evokes in a short book the long married life of two artists. Evenings at Five is a strong tale of love-after-death.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of

In music the present is extended.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.

Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.