“if a violin string could ache, i would be that string.”

“There is a man, playing a violin, and the strings are the nerves in his own arm...”

“The soul, they say, is divine and the flesh is iniquity. But I am a musician and I ask this - without the wood and the strings of the violin, where would the sonata find form?”

“Love is like a violin. The music may stop now and then, but the strings remain forever.”

“I have on my table a violin string. It is free to move in any direction I like. If I twist one end, it responds; it is free.But it is not free to sing. So I take it and fix it into my violin. I bind it and when it is bound, it is free for the first time to sing.”

“It was pitch dark. I could hear only the violin, and it was as though Juliek's soul were the bow. He was playing his life. The whole of his life was gliding on the strings--his last hopes, his charred past, his extinguished future. He played as he would never play again...When I awoke, in the daylight, I could see Juliek, opposite me, slumped over, dead. Near him lay his violin, smashed, trampled, a strange overwhelming little corpse.”