“What doesn't kill you very often makes you weaker. What doesn't kill you can leave you limping for the rest of your days. What doesn't kill you can make you scared to leave your house, or ev...”

“And then he - Tchaikovsky - turned towards the little lectern that was on the stage, picked up his baton and held it in the air. He paused a moment. It was like watching an old wizard with a...”

“Human brains - in terms of cognition and emotion and consciousness - are essentially the same as they were at the time of Shakespeare or Jesus or Cleopatra or the Stone Age. They are not evo...”

“But there was a sense of something tipping out of balance. The times seemed out of joint. There was too much decadence. Too much intensity. Too much change. Too much happiness juxtaposed wit...”

“He smiles a little. This is the point of being a teacher. A glimmer of hope where you thought it didn't exist.”

“If you live long enough you realise that every proven fact is later disproved and then proven again.”

“It may seem strange, falling in love with someone because of a gesture, but sometimes you can read an entire person in a single moment. The way you study a grain of sand and understand the u...”

“Maybe Shakespeare was right. Maybe all the world was a stage. Maybe without the act everything would fall apart. The key to happiness wasn't being yourself, because what did that even mean?...”