Beethoven was ahead of the times, Bach behind them.

The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.

Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.

But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.

I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.

The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.

There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.

I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there.

To the unmusical hearer a note on the gong means dinner, this perhaps often is menacing enough.

It looks wrong, and it sounds wrong, but it's right.

You’ll only know the answers once you love.

Don't steamroll your way into a conversation before establishing any relational credibility.

To win more medals at Beijing is just fantastic, and British cycling has come a huge way in the last few years.

The following sentiments are illustrative of the philosophy of the Talmud: "Love peace and pursue it at any cost."

I'm not a huge sports fan in general, I don't spend a lot of time watching other people do stuff. I tend to like to go out and do stuff myself.

If I had a wand and could put statues in different places, one of the statues would go to a man who just died, called Norman Borlaug, who came up with the Green Revolution.

It doesn't matter if you're doing a studio movie or you're doing an independent movie. When you get to set and you're doing a scene, it's always going to be the same job.

People under seventy and over seven are very unreliable if they are not cats.

Fortunate is the person who has learned that the most certain way to 'get' is to first 'give' through some sort of useful service.

Men in their late 50s often make very bad decisions.