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

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.

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.

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

It is the moral duty of every US voter to guarantee that Barack Hussein Obama is a one-term president.

Much of the social history of the Western world, over the past three decades, has been a history of replacing what worked with what sounded good.

When I hear somebody sigh, 'Life is hard, ' I am always tempted to ask, 'Compared to what?'

Brains are not everything.

It's almost a shock to me to go into places, and there's smoking these days. Boy, my life has changed, because everybody used to smoke.

I like Louis Vuitton accessories, but I'd never wear their clothes. No offense, it's just not my steeze.

I've been proud to be a lifelong Chicago Cub and still be with the Cubs. That's always been important to me and I think it's always been special

Social democracy does not represent an ideal future; it does not even represent the ideal past.

For me, a poem is an opportunity to kind of interrogate myself a little bit.

Man alone of all the creatures of earth can change his own pattern. Man alone is the architect of his own destiny.