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The persistent slow music occasionally drags its heels, and the choral final act, in Paradise, has that slight flatness that often afflicts the music of Heaven by composers who have no particular desire to go there.

— Debussy by Stephen Walsh (Page 221)

All three pieces show that Debussy was not in rebellion against tonality, only against the rules by which it supposedly worked.

— Debussy by Stephen Walsh (Page 128)

[Debussy’s] opinion, of course, was that Wagner was a great composer but a dangerous model. “The time is near,”…”when this man will take a sweet revenge on the Parisians, and we will suffer as much, because he will be one of those fortresses the public likes to erect against every new aesthetic. And since, in all sincerity, we won’t be able to call it bad, we’ll just have to keep quiet.”

— Debussy by Stephen Walsh (Page 89)

The usual antonym for the word “spiritual” is “material.” That at least is what I believed when I began this inquiry—that the whole issue with spirituality turned on a question of metaphysics. Now I’m inclined to think a much better and certainly more useful antonym for “spiritual” might be “egotistical.”

— How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan (64%)