Intelligence is silence, truth is being invisible. But what a racket I make in declaring this..

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

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of.

The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A de….

If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer..

So far as musical pedagogy is concerned - And by extension of musical creation - Nadia Boulanger is the most influential person who ever lived.

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..

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

All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without..

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable..

Anyone can be gay - it's no accomplishment - but only I can be me..

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

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

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

Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet..

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

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations..

Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future..

Nothing is a waste that makes a memory..

In music the present is extended..