Jack Viertel

“Ike willed himself to become a baseball fan, learning the names, strengths and weaknesses, and personal quirks of the players the way he had for years come to know each member of each ensemble he had led or played in. The game began to fascinate him because of its natural kinship with music, the nine-man ensemble pulsing toward and away from home plate with every pitch, each of them sent spinning into action when the ball was hit, moving with a practiced virtuosity no different from a brass section handing off a melody to the strings as a song moved from section to section. Lil kept score and rooted hard for the Mets, but to Ike, it was just a new kind of music, and, when played well, a beautiful thing to watch. Perhaps it could even fill a void. 12.”
― Jack Viertel, Broadway Melody

“And yet,” he almost whispered after another long pause, “we just keep wanting. Or I do, or did, and I think, because I got so little of what I wanted for so long . . . I just kept wanting. And that doesn’t seem unreasonable to me in a fair world—it’s just a condition of life,”
― Jack Viertel, Broadway Melody