The sentimental songs she sang in music class were all about little angels with golden wings, madonnas, lagoons, gondoliers -- mawkish compositions that allowed her to glimpse, through the silliness of the words and the indiscretions of the music, the alluring, phantasmagoric realm of genuine feeling.

She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from…

And now she could not bring herself to believe that the uneventful life she was leading was the happiness of which she had dreamed.

Before her marriage she had thought that she had love within her grasp but since the happiness which she had expected this love to bring her hadn't come, she s…

This music is forever for me. It's the stage thing, that rush moment that you live for. It never lasts, but that's what you live for.

The piano is always true to me. In times of despair, happiness, and joy, its mood is always my own.

What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn't laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for …