Im Grunde wollen wir Klavier sein, sagte er [Glenn Gould], nicht Menschen sein, sondern Klavier sein, zeitlebens wollen wir Klavier und nicht Mensch sein, entfliehen dem Menschen, der wir sind, um ganz Klavier zu werden, was aber misslingen muss, woran wir aber nicht glauben wollen, so er.
- THOMAS BERNHARD, DER UNTERGEHER
It is, in short, music which observes neither end nor beginning, music with neither real climax nor real resolution, music which, like Baudelaires's lovers, "rests lightly on the wings of the unchecked wind." It has, then, unity through intuitive perception, unity born of craft and scrutiny, mellowed by mastery achieved, and revealed to us here, as so rarely in art, in the vision of subconscious design exulting upon a pinnacle of potency.
- GLENN GOULD, NOTES ON THE GOLDBERG VARIATIONS OF J.S.BACH
He has the true pianist's temperament, and I can only imagine him happy in the embrace of that lumbering exo-skeleton, that brute music-machine which he is accustomed to abuse at will. From a close engagement with anything alive I believe he would shrink. His is not so much the air of a man who has never had a woman, as of a boy who has not yet even wanted one. A certain mischief goes out of us once we take up with women. But then, if he is not her lover, what is he?
- GRACE ANDREACCHI, SCARABOCCHIO
