It is not enough that the artist should be well prepared for the public. The public must be well prepared for what it is going to hear.

Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.

Music and love are the wings of the soul.

Love cannot express the idea of music, while music may give an idea of love

To render my works properly requires a combination of extreme precision and irresistible verve, a regulated vehemence, a dreamy tenderness, and an almost morbid melancholy.

The luck of having talent is not enough; one must also have a talent for luck.

Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.

At least I have the modesty to admit that lack of modesty is one of my failings.

Only by pairing knowledge with inspiration will art evolve. Without these conditions any musician will remain a flawed artist, if one may speak of an artist at all.

Bach is Bach just as God is God.

Time, time - that is our greatest master! Alas, like Ugolino, time devours its own children.

Grief is depression in proportion to circumstance

If you forget your lines, you had better mumble with conviction.

If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car, it'll be the last car he'll ever lay down in front of.

Focus group research has created a composite No-Man who resembles no-one anyone has ever met.

God knows I'm a workaholic.

I didn't like Los Angeles very much but I like San Francisco.

People who fall in love with books never really stop falling.

So live with men as if God saw you and speak to God, as if men heard you.

People are not remembered by how few times they fail, but by how often they succeed. Every wrong step is another step forward