“There was the same need for obscurity, the same suspicion that if a piece of music had reached a large number of people, it had somehow been drained of its worth.”

“His lines had been honed over centuries, passed down through generations, for poor people needed certain lines; the script was always the same, and they had no option but to beg for mercy.”

“It is absurd to pretend that one cannot love the same woman always, as to pretend that a good artist needs several violins to execute a piece of music.”

“The control of a large force is the same principleas the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing uptheir numbers.”

“The world was large, so large. Bigger than it had been before. Family, too, a bigger word. That felt like a good thing. An essential thing. There was power in numbers.”

“Once you had put the pieces back together, even though you may look intact, you were never quite the same as you'd been before the fall.”