“If I had my life to live over again, I would have made a rule to read some poetry and listen to some music at least once every week.”

“I knew I would have to relearn how to listen to music, and that some of the music we'd loved together I'd never be able to hear again.”

“I remember that story. You have read it four times." Samson shrugged. "Why should I stop with the first reading? Nobody says, 'That was a fine piece of music. I'll never listen to that again." But some people treat books that way. Not I!”

“At first the music almost repelled me, it was so intense, and this man made no attempt to sugarcoat what he was trying to say, or play. It was hard-core, more than anything I had ever heard. After a few listenings I realized that, on some level, I had found the master, and that following this man's example would be my life's work.”

“I invented adventures for myself and made up a life, so as at least to live in some way.”

“To compensate a little for the treachery and weakness of my memory, so extreme that it has happened to me more than once to pick up again...books which I have read carefully a few years before. I have adopted the habit for some time now of adding at the end of each book the time I finished reading it and the judgment I have derived of it as a whole, so that this may represent to me at least the sense and general idea I had conceived of the author in reading it.”