At the age of ninety-three, the cellist Pablo Casals explained how, for the past eighty years, he had started the day in the same manner. He went to the piano and he played two preludes and fugues of Bach: "It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning. . . . It is rediscovery of the world in which I have a joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being human."
— Esther de Waal, Lost in Wonder