“Music is the hidden arithmetic of the soul, which does not know that it deals with numbers. (Paraphrasing Gottfried Wilhelm Leibnitz)”

“There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.”

“music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light”

“The schematicism by which our understanding deals with the phenomenal world ... is a skill so deeply hidden in the human soul that we shall hardly guess the secret trick that Nature here employs.”

“He deals the cards to find the answerThe sacred geometry of chanceThe hidden law of a probable outcomeThe numbers lead a danceI know that the spadesAre the swords of a soldierI know that the clubs are weapons of warI know that diamondsMean money for this artBut that's not the shape of my heart”

“They both loved piano music and were convinced that Beethoven’s Sonata No. 32 was the absolute pinnacle in the history of music. And that Wilhelm Backhaus’s unparalleled performance of the sonata for Decca set the interpretive standard.”