Reviewing music or reviewing anything is a writing job. It's nice if you are experienced in the field you are writing about, but writing is what you are doing.

I said to my friends that if I was going to starve, I might as well starve where the food is good.

Try a thing you haven't done three times. Once, to get over the fear of doing it. Twice, to learn how to do it. And a third time to figure out whether you like it or not.

In Paris, you learn wit, in London you learn to crush your social rivals, and in Florence you learn poise.

I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.

Let your mind alone, and see what happens.

The way to write American music is simple. All you have to do is be an American and then write any kind of music you wish.

I listened to the pure crystalline notes of one of Mozart's concertos dropping at my feet like leaves from the trees.

I've never known a musician who regretted being one. Music itself is not going to let you down.

A libretto that should never have been accepted on a subject that should never have been chosen bya man who should never have attempted it.

Musicians own music because music owns them.

You're never ready for what you have to do. You just do it. That makes you ready.

Love came, it saw, and it conquered me.

Loving someone unconditionally is the ultimate joy

For every idea that's been done to DEATH, there's a child being BORN who hasn't read it yet. Don't kill your dragons.

Babies are born without knee-caps.

I kid around a lot, but pranks are not my best strength!

I'm not a victim - I never want to be perceived that way.

There are no limits, and that applies to everyone on earth.

Sometimes when you're listening to a neuroscientist, they have a tendency to use a particular type of jargon that works in their world perfectly but that would lose the average layman.

In them was not the savage blankness of the reptile species. Instead there was something far worse - burning, unquenchable rage mixed with the self-mocking irony of great intelligence.