The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity.

Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day.

Music is a kind of harmonious language.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.

Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair.

If Beethoven is a prodigy of man, Bach is a miracle of God.

When you change, everything around you changes. That’s magic!

...only the philosophical question is perennial, not the answers.

The secret of food lies in memory - of thinking and then knowing what the taste of cinnamon or steak is.

Was there ever such stuff as great as part of Shakespeare? Only one must not say so! But what think you? - What? - Is there not sad stuff? What? - What?

Keep your feet on the ground and keep reaching for stars.

I occasionally feel contempt for that attitude [degree of sexual desire towards me] when I perceive it, but maybe that's not fair. By our culture we've been taught who is most valued and who is not.

Motherhood changed me because it is so fundamental what you're doing for another person. And you are able to do it even though it takes a lot.

I just don't think of myself as a star. This is what I do for a living; I'm fortunate that I make ends meet.

A joyful heart is more easily made perfect than a downcast one.

I do notice that when I come in to meet casting people, they love that I'm Australian. Maybe it's our good work ethic.