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

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

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

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.

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.

Look at us. One bleeding body, one corpse, and a husk who's been half dead for years. No one who took an objective look at this room could think it was anything but too late, Ruth. For all of us.

Twenty-five years ago I made my vow to love you and to live with you wherever you went, " she whispered. "Since you're bound to go, I'd best keep my promise.

Have the courage to appear poor and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.

Silence makes me feel vulnerable.

If you are aware of your humility, then you are arrogant.

Water finds the easiest path down a mountain.

The only failure in writing is when you stop doing it. Then you fail yourself.

I giggle when I put myself down. It's just funny to me.

I have an affinity for the law. I like looking at the small type on contracts, and if I could have afforded law school, I probably would have gone.

I speak for an art ... weary of its puny exploits, weary of pretending to be able, of being able, of doing a little better the same old thing, of going a little further along a dreary road.