“Schoenberg came to the crisis of modernism from a standpoint diametrically opposed to that of Schenker and Tovey: not with his finger in the dyke but with his whole frame spreadeagled on a board swept along by the surf of history.”

“I turn to see Ansel leaning against the door frame. His eyes swept over the room."Whoa, Hurricane Naomi strikes, leaving no survivers.”

“While a creator does and must worship Man (which means his own highest potentiality; which is his natural self-reverence), he must not make the mistake of thinking that this means the necessity to worship Mankind (as a collective). These are two entirely different conceptions, with entirely - (immensely and diametrically opposed) - different consequences.”

“He pries me from his chest and drops his hand from the back of my head, tracing my ear, along my jawline. He snatches his fingers a moment before they press into my lip.”

“And then one day he realised that of course he was always staring at his hand when he wrote, was always watching the pen as it moved along, gripped by his fingers, his fingers floating there in front of his eyes just above the words, above that single white sheet, just above these words i’m writing now, his fingers between him and all that, like another person, a third person, when all along you thot it was just the two of you talking and he suddenly realized it was the three of them, handling it on from one to the other, his hand translating itself, his words slipping thru his fingers into the written world. You.”

“It was a laugh that came from the tip of his toes, gaining force and soul as it traveled through his body and out into the world in mirthful bursts. There wasn't anything fake about it; it was an amusement park of a laugh, and when it appeared, you wanted to jump on board.”