The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later.

I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones.

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

Everything you do is music, and everywhere is the best seat.

The act of listening is in fact an act of composing.

The world is no longer a romantic place; some of its people still are however, and therein lies the promise. Don't let the world win.

It is not irritating to be where one is. It is only irritating to think one would like to be somewhere else.

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.

Good music can act as a guide to good living.

Look at everything. Don't close your eyes to the world around you. Look and become curious and interested in what there is to see.

Very often people have a very limited way of thinking.

Many fires burn below the surface.

No failure in America, whether of love or money, is ever simple; it is always a kind of betrayal, of a mass of shadowy, shared hopes.

As soon as man seeks to penetrate the secrets of Nature--in which nothing is secret and it is but a question of seeing--he realizes that the simple produces the supernatural.

It reads better than it lives

A multitude of words is tiresome, unlike remaining centered.

Other people are joyous, like on the feast of the ox, like on the way up to the terrace in the spring. I alone am inert, giving no sign, like a newborn baby who has not learned to smile.

Large enterprises make the few rich, but the majority prosper only through the carefulness and detail of thrift.

Words are power. And a book is full of words. Be careful what power you get from it. But know that you do.