I am now face to face with dying. But I am not finished with living.

Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’.

There is no one part of the brain which recognizes or responds emotionally to music. Instead, there are many different parts responding to different aspects of music: to pitch, to frequency, to timbre, to tonal intervals, to consonance, to dissonance, to rhythm, to melodic contour, to harmony.

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

It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me.

A profound intriguing and compelling guide to the intricacies of the human brain.

There are, of course, inherent tendencies to repetition in music itself. Our poetry, our ballads, our songs are full of repetition; nursery rhymes and the little chants and songs we use to teach young children have choruses and refrains. We are attracted to repetition, even as adults; we want the stimulus and the reward again and again, and in music we get it. Perhaps, therefore, we should not be surprised, should not complain if the balance sometimes shifts too far and our musical sensitivity becomes a vulnerability.