“The symphony orchestra had played poorly, so the conductor was in a bad mood. That night he beat his wife--because the music hadn't been beautiful enough.”

“He raised his hands and, guided by a redeeming impulse of truth-like a conductor leading his orchestra in a grand symphony-finally set fingers to keyboard and let the melody of his story dance across the screen”

“Blake had his own idea. He didn’t lead her to the dancefloor. Blake took her deeper into the corner behind their table.With the pink rose cradled carefully in their combined hands, Blake and Livia began a slow dance to music only they could hear. Livia danced to the symphony she heard flowing out of the church window the night she found out he could play. She opened her eyes to see Blake’s serene face. She wondered if he danced to music he was composing in his head at this very moment—music that had not yet been played.”

“Jobs had begun to drop acid by then, and he turned Brennan on to it as well, in a wheat field just outside Sunnyvale. "It was great," he recalled. "I had been listening to a lot of Bach. All of a sudden the whole field was playing Bach. It was the most wonderful feeling of my life up to that point. I felt like the conductor of this symphony with Bach coming through the wheat.”

“The waters of the stream played the part of the orchestra, and the sunlight provided the dancers. Every now and then a crescendo of wind highlighted the symphony in the clearing by the creek.”

“A dean is the conductor of an orchestra made up entirely of composers.”