Failure is the most important part of an artist's training, and one you cannot afford to do without.

Music, being identical with heaven, isn't a thing of momentary thrills, or even hourly ones. It's a condition of eternity.

I’ve learned what ‘classical’ means. It means something that sings and dances through sheer joy of existence.

There is no room in music for the second-rate - it might just as well be the nineteenth-rate.

One of the advantages of being over forty is that one begins to learn the difference between knowing and realising.

Always ask for advice but never take it.

Music-making as a means of getting money is hell

The Heavenly Spheres make music for us, The Holy Twelve dance with us, All things join in the dance! Ye who dance not, know not what we are knowing.

Everyone make mistakes and you learn a lesson from them. But, sometimes just one mistake made in influence of something can ruins your whole life.

Politicians are played by what they say and they don't do

I told him. We got a library here. Got plenty of good books, too. -Larry Brown, Dirty Work

When you get into the final week of the Tour de France, it becomes a different kind of race. As the distance and the fatigue really tell, that is when it becomes a proper test of everyone's fitness.

Thanks to his willingness to face me, my life takes shape, my path evolves.

I mean, if a thing works, if a thing is right, respect that, acknowledge it, respect it and hold to it.

It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.

Any soldier worth his salt should be antiwar. And still there are things worth fighting for.

And of course there is so much of World War II that is documented that we never have seen

Vimes's lack of interest in other people's children was limitless.