If anyone out there has access to this film or its script and can reproduce the hyperbolic witticisms on the greatness of Bach (e.g., "Without Bach, God would be third-rate.") uttered in the bookstore scene, I would be obliged. Most if not all of the quotes are from Èmile Cioran, I believe, but I don't know where they can be found in print.
shareI checked here, looking for exactly the same thing.
Did'nt find all the sayings for Bach's greatness in the script,
gathered though all Cioran's sayings about Bach, so:
Emil Cioran (Romanian philosopher, 1911-1995)
about Bach (and God) :
* “If there is anyone who owes everything to Bach, it is certainly God”.
* “Without Bach, God would be a complete second-rate figure"
* “Bach: a scale of tears upon which our desires for God ascend.”
* "Bach's music is the only argument proving the creation of the universe cannot be regarded as a complete failure"
including Bach :
* “Bach, Shakespeare, Beethoven, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche are the only argument against monotheism”
* “Thinking should be like musical meditation. Has any philosopher pursued a thought to its limits the way Bach or Beethoven develop and exhaust a musical theme? Even after having read the most profound thinkers, one still feels the need to begin anew. Only music gives definitive answers”.
about music :
* “A heart without music is like beauty without melancholy”.
* “Music is everything. God himself is nothing more than an acoustic hallucination”.
* “Except for music, everything is a lie, even solitude, even ecstasy. Music, in fact, is the one and the other, only better”.
Thanks very much for posting those. This Cioran seems to have been a bottomless well of quotable lines. Where did you find these? Last I checked there were not many of Cioran's books in English translation, at least in local libraries.
shareindeed most of Cioran's work is a lot easier to find in french (or his native language: romanian)
as far as the quotes are concerned, check here:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emil_Cioran