the rest is noise

"Probably, the young Reiter answered himself, music would just be noise, noise like crumpled pages, noise like burned books. 

 At this point the conductor raised a hand and said or rather whispered confidentially:

'Don't speak of burned books, my dear young man.'

To which Hans responded:

'Everything is a burned book, my dear maestro. Music, the tenth dimension, the fourth dimension, cradles, the production of bullets and rifles, Westerns: all burned books.'

'What are you talking about?' asked the director.

'I was just stating my opinion,' said Hans.

'An opinion like any other,' said Halder, doing his best to end the conversation on a humorous note, one that would leave them all on good terms, he and the conductor and Hans and the conductor, 'a typically adolescent pronouncement.'

'No, no, no,' said the conductor, 'what do you mean by Westerns?'

'Cowboy novels,' said Hans.

The declaration seemed to relieve the director, who, after exchanging a few friendly words with them, soon took his leave. Later, he would tell their hostess that Halder and the Japanese man seemed like decent people, but Halder's young friend was a time bomb, no question about it: an untrained, powerful mind, irrational, illogical, capable of exploding at the moment least expected. Which was untrue."

– 2666, Roberto Bolaño