Every Note Played Quotes
"Location matters in destiny as much as it does in real estate."
"These kids are all overscheduled, stressed-out, and too focused on getting into 'the best' college to allow the nourishment passion needs to grow."
"You have to love it. She can’t blame them. These kids are all overscheduled, stressed-out, and too focused on getting into 'the best' college to allow the nourishment passion needs to grow."
"A flower doesn’t blossom from a seed without the persistent love of sun and water."
"The thought of Richard even kissing her now is revolting, that she ever desired him crazy, that they were married surreal."
"Using language to convey the magic of Brahms would be like using a wooden classroom ruler to measure the speed of light."
"Transforming her shame to blame, an alchemy she’s long mastered."
"He’s lost his arms. He’s losing his voice. He’s going to lose his legs. His life."
"She feels her posture harden, a familiar numbness."
"Every offer of assistance is a block of concrete placed atop his head, sinking him irrevocably deeper."
"Listening to Schumann is like looking at a Picasso, like breathing in God."
"He can’t bear to listen to the masterpieces of these great composers, the music playing in the practiced circuits of his mind, never again to be executed by his fingers."
"He’s always loved her, but they were never close."
"I’m sick of being in here. I can still walk. I’ll be fine."
"Everything living is in motion, going somewhere, talking, walking, pecking, flying, doing."
"Listening to Bill serenade him with Broadway tunes is a fork dipped in vinegar, stabbing him in the eye."
"His world, his fascination, his reason, was the piano."
"But he presses on, every step a grueling punishment."
"The people walking by will think he’s nuts. He feels a little nuts."
"Her voice was a melody of exotic sounds and intonation, a song he wanted to learn."
"Raised under Russian oppression, she’d seen more than a lifetime’s worth of weeping before she could tie her own shoes."
"The exquisite agony in hearing the music he loves but can never play is far more painful than Bill’s rendition of 'Everything’s Coming Up Roses.'"
"A joyless experience. Except he loves Grace. He hates this student."
"A comprehensive menu of memories and feelings related to this body, inappropriate to this bizarre situation, scrolls across her consciousness."
"The entire sensory experience—every festive, forbidden molecule of it—disgusts him."
"Maybe this is how it ends. Maybe this is what happens next."
"Anything that goes into his mouth now could easily kill him."
"She stays in her seat, listening to the squeaky sound of his rubber-soled footsteps."
"He feels pathetic, foolish, resentful, and stupid."
"He’s plagued with regret and the inability to articulate the apology he wants to give her."
"She’s tired of teaching students who don’t want to play piano."
"He figures every single thing that didn’t work before scientists discovered the polio vaccine, for example, was necessary to get them to that cure."
"He’s living with a disease that shaves off another layer of control every single day."
"He’s still in good spirits. Because I could no longer manage living alone, I’ve moved back in with Karina."
"For the past three days, time has been a fat slug napping on a shady stone."
"To look up at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is to be with God."
"The compositions are scribbles, run-on sentences without proper grammar."
"I’m too tired. He hasn’t done a damn thing all day, and he’s exhausted."
"Denial, blunt and dull and shaped more like a spoon than a knife, is the only weapon he’s got."
"He can’t take one more second of this assault, this madness, this noise."
"I have to fight against the panic and keep breathing."