“As if music were a separate thing you could drive yourself into, make love to, fuck.”

“Thank God Roxane Coss had not fallen in love with one of the Russians. She doubted they could make it up the stairs without stopping for a cigarette and telling at least one loud story that no one could understand.”

“...it was a miraculous thing to be able to watch the person you love undetected,”

“He believed that life, true life, was something that was stored in music. True life was kept safe in the lines of Tchaikovsky's Eugene Onegin while you went out in the world and met the obligations required of you. Certainly he knew (though did not completely understand) that opera wasn't for everyone, but for everyone he hoped there was something. The records he cherished, the rare opportunities to see a live performance, those were the marks by which he gauged his ability to love.”

“In this life we love who we love. There were some stories in which facts were very nearly irrelevant.”

“That was the way things worked. When you were looking for the big fight, the moment that you thought would knock everything over, nothing much happened at all.”

“It makes you wonder. All the brilliant things we might have done with our lives if only we suspected we knew how.”