“At Times, even he admitted that he'd been more an observer of the world than a participant in it, and in moments of painful honesty, he sometimes believed he was a failure in all what was important”

“At times, he even admitted that he'd been more an observer of the world than a participant in it...”

“he'd once believed that the answer lay somehow in themusic he created, he suspected now that He'd been mistaken. The more he thought about it, the more he'd come to realize that for him, music had always been a movement away from reality rather than a means of living in it more deeply. .. he now knew that burying himself in music had less to do with God than a selfish desire to escape.”

“Sometimes he felt as if he'd been born in the wrong century. The people of this time were all wrong for him, and he was all wrong for them. But he refused to become something he wasn't just for society's approval.”

“He always apologized, and sometimes he would even cry because of the bruises he'd made on her arms or legs or her back. He would say that he hated what he'd done, but in the next breath tell her she'd deserved it. That if she'd been more careful, it wouldn't have happened. That if she'd been paying attention or hadn't been so stupid, he wouldn't have lost his temper.”

“For the first time in a long time, he didn't think of the past. And of all the things he'd lost. He thought only of the present, and what he had. And how it was so much more than he deserved. And he prayed then that he would never, ever lose it.”