Art is a product of nature in general, in the particular form of human nature.

It's always the same: mediocrities are over-valued and great men are rejected.

Comprehensibility is the highest law of all. Unity must be there. There must be means of ensuring it. All the things familiar to us from primitive life must also be used in works of art.

Indeed, man only exists insofar as he expresses himself. Music does it in musical ideas.

Music is natural law as related to the sense of hearing.

Your ears will always lead you right, but you must know why.

What is music? Music is language. A human being wants to express ideas in this language, but not ideas that can be translated into concepts.

Except for the violin pieces and a few of my orchestra pieces, all of my works from the Passacaglia on relate to the death of my mother.

My evening visitors if they cannot see the clock should find the time in my face.

I knew exactly what to do on Alien, it was funny.

I don't know how to be happy - They didn't teach it in my school

My morality, the morality of reason, is contained in a single axiom: existence exists - and in a single choice: to live.

I have swum against the stream all my life. It's not something I feel uncomfortable with. Is it difficult? Is it unpleasant? You bet.

I look at you and wham, I'm head over heals. I guess that love is like a banana peel.

Don't think you are looking at me because you are not.

If y'all fresh to death, then I'm deceased.

What name to call thee by, O virgin fair, I know not, for thy looks are not of earth And more than mortal seems thy countenances

A movie will do in one second, with one image, what it will take a novelist at least a page to describe.