Sometimes I sensed that the books I read in rapid succession had set up some sort of murmur among themselves, transforming my head into an orchestra pit where different musical instruments sounded out, and I would realize that I could endure this lif...
Don't die with the music on your tongue unsung! Don't die with the apps in your mind undesigned! Don't die with the books in your head unpublished! Don't die with the sermons in your heart unpreached! Live well and die well!
Phoebe doesn't quite believe in fate the way I do. She says you have to your destiny, and she always expects life to be like a romantic comedy: all you have to do is dress the part of the heroine, and pretty soon you'll be kissing some hottie while f...
I was never very good with either my hands or feet. It always seemed to me they'd just been stuck on as an afterthought during my making. Dreams didn't translate through sports, or music, dancing, carpentry, plumbing. I was the bookish kid, more at h...
I say I write to you, but, truth be told, I prefer the American idiom: I write you. I'll write you friends say, as if, in writing, someone could be caused to appear, as if writing were a spell, some form of conjuration. So, I write you to bring you h...
The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite ten...
It's so frustrating that everybody rags on eighties music, when there's a lot of terrific stuff out there," he said. "There's no irony to it. It's not afraid to just be happy or enthusiastic or earnest. Or to have melody. Sure, you can blame it for b...
I can't describe the feeling when I go down – it's down down down and there's never going to be an up again. And whatever was good isn't good any more; white becomes grey, music becomes dictionaries, honey becomes beer and the sky a curdled lemon. ...
But it became clear very quickly that I'd underestimated how much I liked him. Not him, perhaps, but the fact that I had someone on the other end of an invisible line. Someone to update and get updates from, to inform of a comic discovery, to imagine...
To influence a person is to give him one's own soul. He does not think his natural thoughts, or burn with his natural passions. His virtues are not real to him. His sins, if there are such things as sins, are borrowed. He becomes an echo of someone e...
I should think that to hear such lovely music as that would really make him feel better." The lady gave a discriminating smile. “I am afraid there are moments in life when even Beethoven has nothing to say to us. We must admit, however, that they a...
When you have two notes from two different performances Auto-Tuned, it sounds like a car horn. And then you add harmonies, and it starts to sound like baby seals honking." - Tom Lord-Alge on Auto-Tune
She knows about the music stuff, but she doesn't care. That's why I didn't tell her about my job at the studio. She doesn't want make me want to be better, like you do. She doesn't get that it's scary... to want something so much and not be sure if y...
It's the latest popular song," declared the phonograph, speaking in a sulky tone of voice. "A popular song?" "Yes. One that the feeble-minded can remember the words of and those ignorant of music can whistle or sing. That makes a popular song popular...
I have an idea that the only thing which makes it possible to regard this world we live in without disgust is the beauty which now and then men create out of the chaos. The pictures they paint, the music they compose, the books they write, and the li...
Artists," he said, "are people who say, 'I can't fix my country or my state or my city, or even my marriage. But by golly, I can make this square of canvas, or this eight-and-a-half-by-eleven piece of paper, or this lump of clay, or these twelve bars...
Hidden Highlands was maybe a little richer but not that different from many of the other small, wealthy and scared enclaves nestled in the hills and valleys around Los Angeles. Walls and gates, guardhouses and private security forces were the secret ...
She opens her eyes as the fury continues, pinning me with her glare. Her gaze reached into my soul as I spin the music back to the simple melody at its core—our melody. A moment of recognition washes over her, followed by regret, fear, terror. An e...
Thomas closes the gap between us and kisses me. Hard. This is not wet and sloppy like his playful kisses. Or dry and desperate like Percy's. Or teasing like the king's. No. This kiss is eloquent and alive and speaks direcetly to my soul. My heart rup...
It almost felt like we were driving in our own world--like we were inside a snow globe--and there was music and sunlight and smiles and laughter floating in the air. And it was all self-contained in a beautiful bubble filled with glittering water tha...
I began to long, as I had before, for some special smell, some special music that would fill me, lift me up and carry me away, float me off the rocks of my body and sweep me into some wideness, some vast expanse of blue-grey nothingness.