To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.

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.

Take a good book to bed with you—books do not snore.

When you get to the end of your rope tie a knot in it and hang on.

Close with a Frenchman, but out-maneuver a Russian.

I dreamed horse and lived horse and expected, if necessary, to marry a horse; for all practical purposes I was a horse.

I pay very little regard...to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If they profess a disinclination for it, I only set it down that they have not yet seen the right person.

You never appreciate your anonymity until you don't have it anymore.

The real beauty in my professional experience has been friendships and collaborations with filmmakers.

Music is about the only thing left that people don't fight over.

Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.

There's never going to be a system that is fair to everyone