We should always remember that sensitiveness and emotion constitute the real content of a work of art

The only love affair I have ever had was with music.

Why become a second-rate Ravel when you're already a first-rate Gershwin?

Music, I feel, must be emotional first and intellectual second.

I did my work slowly, drop by drop. I tore it out of me by pieces.

I do not ask for my music to be interpreted, but only for it to be played.

I begin by considering an effect.

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

If he'd been making shell-cases during the war it might have been better for music.

To George Gershwin, on refusinghim as a pupil: You would only lose the spontaneous quality of your melody, and end by writing bad Ravel.

Remember that I wrote a pavane for a dead princess, and not a dead pavane for a princess!

Today, find a point of stillness: brief, but precious slight, but full small, but luminously real. Find a point stillness in the balance of all things between the breathing out and breathing in.

[A] view of the world is nothing more than a set of beliefs, a way to freeze the world in our mind. … [T]his can never match Reality, … because the world isn't frozen.

The strongest pressure in the world can be friendly pressure.

I think it rather pathetic that so many people are looking forward to heaven to prove that their doctrinal position was correct.

If you are black, if you are Puerto Rican or Hispanic, be proud of that. But don't let it become a problem. Let it become somebody else's problem.

We give tremendous amounts of money to California - California in many ways is out of control.

Happiness is not a brilliant climax to years of grim struggle and anxiety. It is a long succession of little decisions simply to be happy in the moment.

Manhattan cabs are born old.

Well it's true, ever since I stopped eating meat I feel a lot better among animals, I feel I can be much more honest when I pat a dog.

The successful warrior is the average man, with laser-like focus and a chair that's not obtained from Craigslist that keeps poking into his back.