Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.

The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.

One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity.

Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day.

Music is a kind of harmonious language.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.

Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair.

If Beethoven is a prodigy of man, Bach is a miracle of God.

One truth doesn't refute another. Truth doesn't lie in the object, but in how we see it.

A well-adjusted person wouldn't talk much. There's not a lot to be said about most of life. Most days, weeks, years, lives, nothing happens... and still we carry on chattering at each other.

Oh, I was never a businessman. I was a visionary, a dreamer.

I will say that the food in both Japan and Italy was immaculate. I don't remember having bad food in either country.

There is no greater education than one that is self-driven.

The requirements of health, and the style of female attire which custom enjoins, are in direct antagonism to each other.

There may be no single thing that can teach us more about life than death.

I tend to be the type who is overly polite and sort of ingratiating to other people.

I heard a bird sing In the dark of December A magical thing And sweet to remember. 'We are nearer to Spring Than we were in September,' I heard a bird sing In the dark of December.

I love acting, truly my favorite people are actors.