“Laziness is almost as compelling as life. The new farce you're having to play crushes you with its banality, and all in all it takes more cowardice than courage to start all over again.”

“Sometimes it's best to take things down and start all over again. It's the way of the world.”

“If I do start life all over again, I’ll do so very cautiously, but will I even start? Caution, understanding, it’s all useless. There is weariness, and nothing more.”

“Do you know what courage is? Not a willingness to fling oneself into danger without proper thought – that is nothing, nothing. There is cowardice in all impulse. Real courage lies in thinking things through, seeing all the risks, and taking them anyway. Lady Tamarind has courage.”

“It seems to me that if you place music (and books, probably, and films, and plays, and anything that makes you feel) at the center of your being, then you can’t afford to sort out your love life, start to think of it as the finished product. You’ve got to pick at it, keep it alive and in turmoil, you’ve got to pick at it and unravel it until it all comes apart and you’re compelled to start all over again. Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and as a consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable, solid relationship.”

“Life can be wonderful if you're not afraid of it. All it takes is courage, imagination ... and a little dough”