“And so they played some of the world's loveliest piano music - the exiled homesick girl, the humiliated, tired old man. Not properly. Better than that.”

“The ordinary procedure of the nineteenth century is that when a powerful and noble personage encounters a man of feeling, he kills, exiles, imprisons or so humiliates him that the other, like a fool, dies of grief.”

“…dearest, loveliest Elizabeth [...] By you, I was properly humbled.”

“I'd never seen a guy my own age play the piano. It was like sex and musical theatre fused together.”

“The loveliest Muse in the world does not feed her owner; these girls make fine mistresses but terrible wives”

“Where we are from... [s]tories are factual. If a farmer is declared a music virtuoso by the state, everyone had better start calling him maestro. And secretly, he'd be wise to start practicing the piano. For us, the story is more important than the person. If a man and his story are in conflict, it is the man who must change.”