“Gradually the feeling wears off, and I feel swamped again by the inexplicable pettiness of being alive.”

“One of the hardest things about being alive is being with other people.”

“I breathed and breathed and did feel some calmness enter in, though it was, as always, shot with a sense of loss. Loss and fear.”

“But I can hardly remember what it felt like. It's like everything that happens to you. It doesn't feel real.”

“I want to be careful not to throw all this away. This is happiness. I think this is what happiness is. I haven't got it yet, but I can sense it out there. I feel I'm close to it. Some days, I'm so close I can almost smell it.”

“The function of music is to liberate in the soul those feelings which normally we keep locked up in the heart.”

“People never explain to you exactly what they think and feel and how their thoughts and feelings work, do they? They don't have time. Or the right words. But that's what books do. It's as though your daily life is a film in the cinema. It can be fun, looking at those pictures. But if you want to know what lies behind the flat screen you have to read a book. That explains it all.”