I never for a moment considered killing myself, because it wouldn't have achieved anything.

The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings which normally we keep locked up in the heart.

Life can be lived at a remove. You trade in futures, and then you trade in derivatives of futures. Banks make more money trading derivatives than they do trading actual commodities.

They're so attached to their patterns that they've forgotten rule number one of human behavior: there are no patterns. People just do things. There's no such things as a coherent and fully integrated human personality, let alone consistent motivation.

We're deaf men working as musicians; we play the music but we can't hear it.

I think closeness to death would be pretty exhilarating in a way, and friendship, yeh, and selflessness, a kind of selflessness, a sense of your own worthlessness, I think, is pretty exhilarating.

. . . she read with undifferentiated glee . . .