Madam, you ask me how I compose. I compose sitting down.

Music is an incomparably more powerful means and is a subtler language for expressing the thousand different moments of the soul's moods.

Where the heart does not enter; there can be no music.

To regret the past, to hope in the future, and never to be satisfied with the present: that is what I spend my whole life doing

Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.

Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.

Music possesses much richer means of expression and it is a more subtle medium for translating the 1000 shifting moments of the feelings of the soul.

After the last notes of Gotterdammerung I felt as though I had been let out of prison.

I like the plot of The Nutcracker - not at all.

The creative process is like music which takes root with extraordinary force and rapidity

What I need is to believe in myself again — for my faith has been greatly undermined; it seems to me my role is over.

You need to spend time crawling alone through shadows to truly appreciate what it is to stand in the sun.

What could he be thinking of? He seemed to be trying to remember something, perhaps an engagement, perhaps an excuse to leave her. For eventually, they all made some excuse.

Practically speaking, your religion is the story you tell about your life.

The only thing that matters is what you do now, here.

If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.

Synchronistic events offer us perceptions that may be useful in our psychological and spiritual growth and may reveal to us, through intuitive knowledge, that our lives have meaning.

Everything is both simpler than we can imagine and more entangled than we can conceive.

My philosophy, don't let cancer ruin your life. You get up every day and use what you have and what time you have left.

Our secret weapon, Khione! We're not just a bunch of demigods. We're a team.

There is no heroic poem in the world but is at bottom a biography, the life of a man.