Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

It is nothing to succeed if one has not taken great trouble, and it is nothing to fail if one has done the best one could.

Loving a child doesn't mean giving in to all his whims; to love him is to bring out the best in him, to teach him to love what is difficult.

The art of music is so deep and profound that to approach it very seriously only is not enough. One must approach music with a serious rigor and, at the same time, with a great, affectionate joy.

Do not take up music unless you would rather die than not do so.

Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth.

Without discipline, there can be no freedom.

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.

False notes can be forgiven, false music cannot.

You know... sometimes we meet our destiny on the road we take to avoid it.

If in fact it’s not too late to realize that something’s ‘too late’, then there’s a good chance that it’s not.

The two-party system has served America very well. We always have political movements one way or another but the evolution of a lasting third party probably will not happen.

You need to be funny in a way that people feel like you're trying to make a deeper connection. So that's what I try to do.

Luckily, I'm not afraid to make a fool of myself.

Being a grandparent is whole new phase in your life.

A person cannot all of a sudden become good at what they do just by switching streams.

All right, I am often brash, rude and brutally direct. Someday I'm going to die and I don't have time to toe-dance around the periphery of hatred.

Just sit and open your eyes and open your heart. It's dance theater.

Painting was called silent poetry and poetry speaking painting.