I have just been all round the world and have formed a very poor opinion of it.

The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought.

They are quite hopeless - drooling, driveling, doleful, depressing, dropsical drips.

Composers should write tunes that chauffeurs and errand boys can whistle.

The trouble with women in an orchestra is that if they're attractive it will upset my players and if they're not it will upset me.

"Have you heard any Stockhausen?" Beecham was asked. "No, but I believe I have stepped in some."

Madam, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands and all you can do is scratch it.

The sound of a harpsichord - two skeletons copulating on a tin roof in a thunderstorm.

Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory.

There are two golden rules for an orchestra: start together and finish together. The public doesn't give a damn what goes on in between.

It is quite untrue that British people don't appreciate music. They may not understand it but they absolutely love the noise it makes.

...most people in the world don't really use their brains to think. And people who don't think are the ones who don't listen to others.

I feel like every first episode of a TV show is bad, you know, and it always improves.

How do you become a thought leader? It starts with *being* a thought leader and then connecting the dots back to you.

The assumption that the square of a unit vector is positive unity leads to an algebra whose characteristic quantities are non-associative.

Undeveloped, the whole thing,tossed into a box before we really had a chance to know what we had, and that's why we broke up.

Who has courage to say no again and again to desires, to despise the objects of ambition, who is a whole in himself, smoothed and rounded.

I refuse to believe that the tendency of human nature is always downward.

Because the alternative sucks!

I write as well as I can. I'm a journalist at heart, so it's the story that matters.

I'm not thuggin' for me, I'm thuggin' for my family, I pay all the bills, I feed my whole family, wrong or right, I do and I can't stop.