“The darkness enveloped us. All I could hear was the violin and it was as if Juliek's soul had become the bow. He was playing his life...He played that which he would never play again.”

“It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.”

“Do you know what the essential problem of the piano is?” he asked. He held me so his head was a few inches from my own. His eyes darted back and forth. “It is impossible to play continuously on a piano string like a violin. The problem is to sustain a note.”

“Some stories are true that never happened.”

“A destruction, an annihilation that only man can provoke, only man can prevent.”

“Questions outlive the answers.”

“He lifted the violin to his shoulder then, and raised the bow. And he played.”