“There was an interview going on with Itzhak Perlman, a noted violinist, punctuated with examples of him playing the violin. He was saying that he’d been playing since he was a baby and that the music was a vehicle for him, and I thought, This man is lucky. He didn’t have to ask, What am I going to do? or, How should I do it? And even if he did, he had his music, which was his key, opening the door, not just to the world we know, but to parts of that world which are unknown. Once Itzhak Perlman became one with the music, once he and the world became the same thing, he could then change the world. And the only thing is, once he became the world, there was nothing to change.”—John Haskell, American Purgatorio, 2005