“… for music alone can abolish differences
of language or culture between two people and invoke something indestructible within them.”

— Irène Némirovsky

Source: Suite Française

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Irène Némirovsky 7

French novelist who died at the age of 39 in Auschwitz 1903–1942

Мэдисон Роуз

“I can’t stand to sing the same song the same way two nights in succession, let alone two years or ten years. If you can, then it ain’t music, it’s close-order drill or exercise or yodeling or something, not music.”

Billie Holiday book Lady Sings the Blues

Source: Lady Sings the Blues (1956), Ch. 4.

“Music is not a language. Any musical piece is akin to a boulder with complex forms, with striations and engraved designs atop and within, which men can decipher in a thousand different ways without ever finding the right answer or the best one…”

Iannis Xenakis (1922–2001) Greek composer

Introductory notes for Diatope performance, 1978 http://www.moderecords.com/catalog/148xenakis.html

“People who make a difference do not die alone. Something dies in everyone who was affected by them.”

Daniel Kahneman (1934) Israeli-American psychologist

About the death of his long-time collaborator Amos Tversky on 5 June 1996. Nobel Prize Autobiographical Information http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/2002/kahneman-bio.html (2002).
Context: People who make a difference do not die alone. Something dies in everyone who was affected by them. Amos made a great deal of difference, and when he died, life was dimmed and diminished for many of us. There is less intelligence in the world. There is less wit. There are many questions that will never be answered with the same inimitable combination of depth and clarity. There are standards that will not be defended with the same mix of principle and good sense. Life has become poorer. There is a large Amos-shaped gap in the mosaic, and it will not be filled. It cannot be filled because Amos shaped his own place in the world, he shaped his life, and even his dying. And in shaping his life and his world, he changed the world and the life of many around him.