Indeed, man only exists insofar as he expresses himself. Music does it in musical ideas.

It's always the same: mediocrities are over-valued and great men are rejected.

Comprehensibility is the highest law of all. Unity must be there. There must be means of ensuring it. All the things familiar to us from primitive life must also be used in works of art.

Music is natural law as related to the sense of hearing.

Your ears will always lead you right, but you must know why.

What is music? Music is language. A human being wants to express ideas in this language, but not ideas that can be translated into concepts.

Art is a product of nature in general, in the particular form of human nature.

Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother.

At times we convince ourselves, we have something to lose but in fact, who you are and your being remains intact.

The last step in parental love involves the release of the beloved the willing cutting of the cord that would otherwise keep the child in a state of emotional dependence.

I can't say I'm happy to be talking about John Ritter and his passing. In my 21 years of Entertainment Tonight, this really was one of the most shocking and sad things to have happened.

Even the damned in hell have the community of their suffering.

I just like to walk around New York, just put my iPod on and walk around.

When the Soviet Union came to be run by a valetudinarian mafioso like Brezhnev, the thing itself had fallen into self-contempt.

To be an artist is to fail, as no other dare to fail... failure is his world and the shrink from it desertion

Each moment in time we have it all, even when we think we don't.

Discipline is doing what you are supposed to do in the best possible manner at the time you are supposed to do it.

What has brought unique, irreplaceable me - out of all the possibilities of life - here, now, to this?