One has to get through a big pile of mail every day. I don't pass my letters on to a secretary; rather, I try to take care of all of them myself.

All music has to speak in some form or other.

Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plough. The trick is just to wake them up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music.

With creative people, truly new horizons open up.

In Romanticism, the main determinant is the mood, the atmosphere. And in that regard, you could also describe Schubert as a Romantic.

The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it.

Unfortunately, it happens all too seldom that you really disappear behind a work, that you are no longer audible as an interpreter.

Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

Toward the end of his life, one can sense that he was no longer thinking his way into the minds of others, causing them to speak on his behalf, but that he was now speaking for himself.

The composition of a single melody is born out of a bit of text, perhaps the first line, but it can also be the entire strophe; it can even be the poem's overall form.

But the thing that will always occupy me the most is music.

In solitude, you listen to the sacred voice.

If you look at my movie career, I do switch it up a lot. I'm always looking for a lot of different parts. It's been a while since I've been in a situation that was romantic.

I like the idea of a book being a democratic space which readers enter, carrying their own thoughts, and participate in a conversation, or experience of grace.

I am a post-mastectomy woman who believes our feelings need voice in order to be recognized, respected, and of use.

I think because both of my parents were essentially salespeople, and Italian-Americans, I always seemed to get along with people; I had a knack of finding something to talk about.

A lawyer is a man who helps you get what is coming to him.

There is no fair in life and death. If it were, no good men would die young.

You don't build yourself up by putting someone else down.

This world is so full of hypocrisy, the only way you can be honest is to be a hermit.

There is no shortcut to holiness; it must be the business of our whole lives.