No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.

Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.

Anyone who loves music can never be quite unhappy.

My compositions spring from my sorrows. Those that give the world the greatest delight were born of my deepest griefs.

When I wished to sing of love, it turned to sorrow. And when I wished to sing of sorrow, it was transformed for me into love.

You believe happiness to be derived from the place in which once you have been happy, but in truth it is centered in ourselves.

Every night when I go to bed, I hope that I may never wake again, and every morning renews my grief.

I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done.

Easy mind, light heart. A mind that is too easy hides a heart that is too heavy.

O Mozart, immortal Mozart, how many, how infinitely many inspiring suggestions of a finer, better life you have left in our souls!

There is no such thing as happy music.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

I was so absolutely riveted, I felt I was looking into the eyes of the artist. Art just closed the gap of time and space. The 16th century became as real to me as the 20th. It was something magical.

For me, experimenting involves traditionalism.

When your body says 'no,' it doesn't matter how big your heart is.

we are all given the ingredients of happiness, but the mixing is left to ourselves.

I didn't want to write for pay. I wanted to be paid for what I write.

Virtue is that perfect good, which is the complement of a happy life; the only immortal thing that belongs to mortality.

You have to be true to yourself, but you have to be true to your best self, not to the self that secretly thinks you are better than other people.

I moved to New York to do theater, and I got cast in a play that was funny, and then I was the funny guy. I did a movie that was funny, and then I was the funny guy.

Genius is talent provided with ideals. Genius starves while talent wears purple and fine linen. The man of genius of today will infifty years' time be in most cases no more than a man of talent.