Some Rules For What Goes On Your Bookshelf (What It Says About You)

“Many items there are staples. Others are ingredients that, like salt, are only good in combination with something else. Some things you keep around are healthy, if not very tasty, while a few might count as junk food. (A couple of scholarly presses are indeed known for their Pop-Tarts.) And it’s hardly a decent pantry if you don’t have a few impulse purchases you later regret, or gourmandizing experiments that didn’t quite pan out.”

Explaining Stravinsky

“Like Balanchine, Stravinsky was considered famously hard really to know; unlike Balanchine, he labored to explain himself. His notorious aversion to “interpretations” of his music, any and all of which distorted its meaning, paralleled larger areas of purported misunderstanding. To better explain himself, he would write lengthy letters to established scholars or obscure students.”