page 46
"Perhaps no element of modern life is so stifling--so destroys a human being--as this idol of digital and laryngeal proficiency. I know; I experienced it, and had to die and find still another womb to emerge from."

page 47
"Everyone told me: 'You won't do a thing in Hawaii.' Well, I never wrote so many fugues in my life."
page 109
"He struck the director of the AUU as "not of the common run of students. He seems highly talented, but as is often the case with those of an artistic bent, his fancy may sometimes lead him to eccentricity, to hypersensitiveness, to put the worst interpretation on things, and even to a regrettable tendency to bit a bit exorbitant when he quotes either himself or others."

page 115
"Vagrancy now seemed to have the ghost of government approval, a necessary evil while the Depression lasted."

page 116
"both weak and strong, like unedited human expressions always are"

page 142
"...a text in which Wolfe extols the joys of loneliness and isolation, declaring that loneliness is a more common shared experience for modern man than the experience of love as advocated by Christ."

page 156
"For all its fleeting moments of fulfillment, this period of Partch's life is characterized by a growing sense of painful isolation, by frustration, struggle, by lack of achievement."

page 163
"...there's something in his work which deliberately defies being made into anything seminal."

page 172
"recalls him occasionally lacing a root beer with scotch largely, she feels, for humorous effect."

page 173
"Partch remarked near the end of his life that he should have been writing his book then and composing in the 1940s."

"To some extent, the book can be seen as intellectual autobiography, an account of the "wayward trail" Partch had traveled for two decades and would continue to follow."

page 175
"...after reading a draft of the text he wrote to thank Partch for the profit he had gained in "jotting down notes and ideas suggested by your essay""

page 176
"what distinguishes dissonances from consonances is not a greater or lesser degree of beauty, but a greater or lesser degree of comprehensibility"

page 178
"the noncompetitive spirit of an Aztec village in which virtually everyone is an artist, begins to show what the human race is capable of"

page 192
"A few years later he wrote to a friend that after going through the illness and the weeks of hospitalization "in rather fundamental ways I am a different person, and the change was anguishing both to me and others.""

page 215
"what he liked to call "the ancient rhythmic magic""

page 216
"By the early 1950s he had come to feel the act of cleaving an instrument from a piece of wood as a tie to an ancient form of musical magic."

page 220
"...issuing his own recordings led him on a wholly unfamiliar excursion into the business world."

page 221
"No acknowledgement, no review, no mention. It was as though [it] had been dropped into the deeps of Long Island Sound."

page 229
"Second was the idea of the "lost musicians", who are here banded together to become the agents of diametric change. And third was what Partch called "an old interest in the ancient idea of the benevolent, all-knowing witch".

page 239
"Nancarrow had been living in Mexico since 1940, in virtual isolation from the musical life of the United States, an around 1947 had begun work on his series of Studies for Player Piano, compositions that explored a breathtaking range of new possibilities in the domains of polyrhythm, polymeter, and even polytempi."

page 252
"This goes far beyond artistic integrity; indeed the word integrity is an ironic one to use at all in this context. He orchestrated and all but guaranteed the oblivion his work so obviously courts."

page 273
"She was struck by the scenes in Music Studio of Partch packing and mailing his records..."

page 276
"...played with picks, fingers, mallets, and felted sticks."

page 294
"The spectacle of me and two tons of musical effects wandering around the country is becoming almost comical."

page 297
"...after I pay the $900 they say I owe them you'll be able to drive a truck through the hole in my bank account.:

page 300
"Although these were purely social visits, the question of his professional future was never far from his mind."

page 308
[good photo]

page 310
"I've been trying to write 23 duets, exploiting instruments, for several months..."

page 311
"A small town... tends to be introspective. It retains a kind of indigenous individuality--this despite TV waves from the nearest urban center. Little irritations become fantastically exaggerated, and it seems easier and more natural to observe small things, such as a fly getting dejuiced in a spiderweb in the corner."

page 317
"I think we actually have a take with the sounds of a collapsing wall."

page 356
"...the shortcomings of academic musical education, with the subsidiary theme of the corruption of youth by fashions, musical and political, of the moment."

page 357
"the Gate 5 record of Castor & Pollux was not perfect, but over the years I got used to its imperfections. Now, I've got to get used to a whole new set of imperfections."

page 364
"Harry was at his best between his first and third drink..."

page 377
"I not only saw the beauty of that, but also the pain and suffering that can come with that type of gift."

page 384
"...he'd looked upon his work as a letter to the world; and the last thing he'd like to do was an enclosure."