The nearest figure to myself would be Shakespeare.

Shiva danced the world into existence... that's a very nice thought.

The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.

Music remains the most strange of the materials because we don't understand what happens when music moves you.

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

I'm outside the music I've made. I have no interest in it.

I remain a humanist. We are a very curious race.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

I've seldom become nostalgic or settled.

The Greek sculptor - I don't think he was very different from any of us.

I think we're all pretty odd.

The advantage of having an artistic tradition is that the younger artist could see an organic link between the real life of one's country and its art work which is a sublimation of that life.

Isn't there any heaven where old beautiful dances, old beautiful intimacies prolong themselves?

Great French design is often about unexpected touches.

In my 20s, I railed against anything 'spiritual', I thought it was all crap.

I eat as healthy as I can. It is tough.

I wanted to become a model and an actress.

There is no difference between saving lives and extending lives, because in both cases we are giving people the chance of more life.

With me, personal relationships are like my religion. I care that deeply about them. I am the complete opposite of a manipulative smoothie.

Is an artist much more than a beggar?

It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam.