We have, each of us, a life story, whose continuity, whose sense, is our lives.

I feel I should be trying to complete my life, whatever completing a life means.

If a man has lost a leg or an eye, he knows he has lost a leg or an eye; but if he has lost a self—himself—he cannot know it, because he is no longer there to know it.

I am a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderation in all my passions.

I cannot pretend i am not without fear.

The power of music, whether joyous or cathartic must steal on one unawares, come spontaneously as a blessing or a grace--

We now know that memories are not fixed or frozen, like Proust's jars of preserves in a larder, but are transformed, disassembled, reassembled, and recategorized with every act of recollection.