"A resigned Korsakov sent a postcard which read: ‘If we’re going, then let’s go, as the parrot said to the cat which was dragging it downstairs by the tail.’ Yes, that was what his life had often felt like. And his head had been bumped on far too many steps."

"Music — good music, great music — had a hard, irreducible purity to it. It might be bitter and despairing and pessimistic, but it could never be cynical. If music is tragic, those with asses’ ears accuse it of being cynical. But when a composer is bitter, or in despair, or pessimistic, that still means he believes in something."

- Noise of Time (Julian Barnes)