The Lost Pianos of Siberia Quotes

“Truly, there would be reason to go mad if it were not for music,’ said the Russian pianist and composer Pyotr Tchaikovsky.18”
― Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia: A Sunday Times Book of 2020

“Where wooden houses seem to cosy up together for warmth, there are pianos washed up and abandoned from the high-tide mark of nineteenth-century European romanticism.”
― Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia

“I soon realized what is missing can sometimes tell you more about a country’s history than what remains. I also learned that Siberia is bigger, more alluring and far more complicated than the archetypes might suggest—much bigger, in fact, than all the assumptions I had made when my plans began to germinate, then proliferate, and I found myself caught up in the momentum of travelling a ravishingly surprising place.”
― Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia

“Siberia is a nightmare or a myth full of impenetrable forests and limitless plains, its murderous proportions strung with groaning oil derricks and sagging wires. Siberia is all those things, and more as well.”
― Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia

“When crystals fell from the feathered branches, it felt like I was walking into a cloudburst.”
― Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia

“I realize I could no more unsnag the idea of Siberia’s lost pianos than set out coatless into cold so extreme it makes your tears freeze into the lines around your eyes.”
― Sophy Roberts, The Lost Pianos of Siberia: A Sunday Times Book of 2020