“Along the way [Mozart] got married; fathered seven children (two of whom survived into adulthood); performed as a pianist; violinist; and conductor; maintained a successful teaching studio; wrote thousands of letters; traveled widely; attended the theater religiously; played cards, billiards, and bocce; and rode horseback for exercise. Not bad for someone portrayed as a giggling idiot in the movies.”

“When we hear a Mozart piano concerto today, we're most likely to hear the piano part played on a modern concert grand. In the hands of a professional pianist, such a piano can bury the strings and the winds and hold its own against the brass. But Mozart wasn't composing for a nine-foot-long, thousand-pound piano; he was composing for a five-and-a-half-foot-long, hundred-and-fifty-pound piano built from balsa wood and dental floss.”

“I remember the tale of the rabbi to whom a dead man came with a problem: he believed that he was alive. "Don't you know," the rabbi told him, "that you are no longer among the living? You are in the Land of Confusion." On hearing the story, the rabbi's son worried that he too was in the Land of Confusion. "Once you know that there exists such a world, you cannot be in it," explained the father. (208)”

“She doesn't attend gallery openings or apear at art-world parties. "People need to see the work. It's more me than my physical presence.”

“There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children.”

“A nut is someone whose noose broke.”

“She wanted children and considered having them a "privilege," but art also "was a privilege given to me and I had to pursue it.”