The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience.

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

Arguably, no artist grows up: If he sheds the perceptions of childhood, he ceases being an artist.

Divine fires do not blaze each day but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence.

Inspiration could be called inhaling the memory of an act never experienced.

It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.

Humor is the ability to see three sides to one coin.

If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.

The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.

God does not give us more than we can handle, " I am told but I wonder if God doesn't overestimate me just a little. Or perhaps, and this is likely, I underestimate God.

Life’s challenges are inevitable. We have to prepare mentally by renewing our mind with inspiration daily to be able to cope when the situation arise.

Like an audience entertained by a magician, we allow ourselves to be deceived by those with a stake in persuading us to ignore reality.

Never yet were the feelings and instincts of our nature violated with impunity; never yet was the voice of conscience silenced without retribution.

It's hard to regulate the speed at which you can achieve something creative and emotional.

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.

I've got at least one tiny corner of the universe I can make just the way I want it.

I try to be thoughtful about spreading the wealth: young designers. Mixing things up is important to me.

I am an international leader, the dean of the Arab rulers, the king of kings of Africa and the imam of Muslims, and my international status does not allow me to descend to a lower level.

Sports was my entire life as long as I can remember.