The past which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity.

Nature gropes and blunders and performs the crudest acts. There is no steady advance upward. There is no design.

There is among doctors, in acute hospitals at least, a presumption of stupidity in their patients.

It is easy to recollect the good things of life, the times when one's heart rejoices and expands, when everything is enfolded in kindness and love; it is easy to recollect the fineness of life-how noble one was, how generous one felt, what courage one showed in the face of adversity.

Music is part of being human.

I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.

Music can lift us out of depression or move us to tears - it is a remedy, a tonic, orange juice for the ear.