charles

“Lucas is happy. It’s not as hard as one might think to become, the hard part is just to keep being it. It’s hard because it’s so easy to get in your head that if you are to be happy, you have to be happy exactly all of the time. And who in the world has the energy for that? Happiness can be exhausting. Honestly, it’s most often enough to just not be the opposite.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Answer Is No

“To philosophize is to learn to live freely.”
― Klaus Vieweg, Hegel: The Philosopher of Freedom

“I know the Commies were choirboys by comparison—the Nazis at least had a modicum of appreciation for the art they plundered during their days here.”
― Bradford Morrow, The Prague Sonata

“Artur Schnabel, one of the towering pianists of the twentieth century. Modified in tone but not spirit from Schnabel’s interview remarks in Chicago the same year Germany surrendered to the Allies. She also knew this was about as high a compliment as Paul Mandelbaum was capable of making. Schnabel’s performances of the thirty-two Beethoven sonatas were possibly the only thing her mentor was capable of carrying on about ad nauseam. You were never going to enter his pantheon of star pupils unless you gave yourself over, heart and soul, to Schnabel’s interpretation of Beethoven’s Klaviersonaten and the virtuoso’s idea that the greatest music was that which is “better than it can be performed.”
― Bradford Morrow, The Prague Sonata