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

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.

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

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.

It's very hard to grow up in a perfect family when you're not perfect.

Thanks, Pepe. You've put an extra night into my life. I would have spent it just sleeping like an ox, but I've lived it instead. I'm grateful.

To me, the thing that is worse than death is betrayal. You see, I could conceive death, but I could not conceive betrayal.

What counts is not necessarily the size of the dog in the fight - it's the size of the fight in the dog.

With me it's the whole thing, it's the conceit, the idea, what the poem is saying. And it goes on just as long as is necessary to say what needs to be said.

It is better to be 'sexy' than 'not sexy'

Since I was young, the artistic expression that fashion embodies has inspired me. It's a way to communicate oneself.

Find your purpose by excavating and tying together the common threads of your happy memories by focusing on the emotions you felt.

I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see.

I would have absolutely messed up 'The Matrix'.