“Music could ache and hurt, that beautiful music was a place a suffering man could hide.”

“But what I felt was inexpressible gratitude for the music, that in this horror there could be something as beautiful as that.”

“My melancholy wants to rest in the hiding places and abysses of perfection: that is why I need music.”

“Music is everything and nothing. It is useless and no limit can be set on its use. Music takes me to places of illimitable sensual and insensate joy, accessing points of ecstasy that no angelic lover could ever locate, or plunging me into gibbering weeping hells of pain that no torturer could devise. Music makes me write this sort of maundering adolescent nonsense without embarrassment. Music is in fact the dog's bollocks. Nothing else comes close.”

“I didn't do music to live; I lived so that I could do music.”

“The music was so loud, all Livia could do was mouth, “Are you okay?”Blake nodded. “You’re beautiful,” he mouthed in response.”