Because art is life, playing to other rhythms.

When someone that you love dies..it's like fireworks suddenly burning out in the sky and everything going black.

People aim for the stars, and they end up like goldfish in a bowl. I wonder if it wouldn't be simpler just to teach children right from the start that life is absurd.

There's so much humanity in a love of trees, so much nostalgia for our first sense of wonder, so much power in just feeling our own insignificance when we are surrounded by nature.

Personally I think that grammar is a way to attain beauty.

That's what the future is for: to build the present, with real plans, made by living people.

I thought: pity the poor in spirit who know neither the enchantment nor the beauty of language.

We think we can make honey without sharing in the fate of bees, but we are in truth nothing but poor bees, destined to accomplish our task and then die.

With the exception of love, friendship and the beauty of Art, I don't see much else that can nurture human life.

The real ordeal is not leaving those you love but learning to live without those who don't love you.

When tea becomes ritual, it takes place at the heart of our ability to see greatness in small things.

I believe that it is impossible for two individuals not committed to their own and each other’s well being to sustain a healthy and enduring relationship.

We’re your friends. Our job is to tease you mercilessly about your foibles, rag you about your upright, honorable nature, and point out to you when you’re being a complete dolt.

Borrowing from Peter to pay Paul.

My life's been too much of a self-created vocation. And there are times when I think I've done everything in the name of defiance.

I'm not in competition with anybody but myself. My goal is to beat my last performance.

To turn $100 into $110 is work. To turn 100 million into $110 million is inevitable.

Devotion means a profusion of life.

There's sort of an open offer to work with a guy in Los Angeles who does big band and orchestra arrangements who was at least an acquaintance to Les Baxter before he passed away.

All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue.

Art is the most benign cultural practice, and yet art has an upper bound of personal revelation that is so far away it is basically a horizon.