Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.

The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.

But in the next world I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.

I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.

The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.

There is no reason why an atheist could not write a good Mass.

I suppose it never occurs to these people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.

Wagner used to read the libretti of his operas to his friends; I am glad I was not there.

To the unmusical hearer a note on the gong means dinner, this perhaps often is menacing enough.

It looks wrong, and it sounds wrong, but it's right.

The great men of music close periods; they do not inaugurate them. The pioneer work, the finding of new paths, is left to smaller men.

You have to be a friend to have them.

I've got my doubts, there's no doubt about it

I was not influenced by Jack Benny, and people have remarked on my timing and Jack's timing, but I don't think you can teach timing. It's something you hear in your head.

The best things beyond their measure cloy.

I would rather have regrets of excess than regrets of denial.

We shall be everything to each other. Nothing else in the world is of any consequence.

Here's why I like geek culture: People like what they like because they like it. They're not trying to fit into any mainstream likes or dislikes.

If you like yourself, other people will like you

I never can think of Judas Iscariot without losing my temper. To my mind Judas Iscariot was nothing but a low, mean, premature, Congressman.

Alcohol removes inhibitions. It doesn't trigger criminal violence where there was none before.