By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There’s no specific line, as you know.

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people - they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

Even when dreaming, if the sentient beings who dwell in the three lower realms are witnessed, then at that moment one should pray to sever the continuity of their negat

I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.

No one is ever a victim, although your conquerors would have you believe in your own victimhood. How else could they conquer you?

Why is it that foolishness repeats itself with such monotonous precision?

Judge not thy friend until thou standest in his place.

I am not afraid to appear in Israel, although when I come to a place like Israel, I know it's not a picnic by the Thames. I am aware of the tension and it saddens me.

I think of reading a book as no less an experience than travelling or falling in love.

There is no real joy that does not involve self-denial and self-discipline

Honesty is often the best policy, but sometimes the appearance of it is worth six of it.

Your former Fathers the Spaniards have now no further Authority over you.