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.

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

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.

She was different. She liked hearing it, because she wanted to recall just enough of it to remember that she never wanted to go back to being the person she'd been before.

If you cannot explain it simply, you do not understand it enough.

They say Rome wasn't built in a day, but I wasn't on that particular job.

Wow, I get to wake up again? Ok. You have to make good with what you've got.

I would rather be politically dead than hypocritically immortalized.

It isn't necessary to seek out adventure. Opening to what is around you will produce the most extraordinary experiences.

I've learned what I can control is whether I am going to live a day in fear and depression and panic, or whether I am going to attack the day and make it as good a day, as wonderful a day, as I can.

I love to cook. I make an award-winning turkey chili.

It taught me, at an early age, that being wrong can be dangerous, but being right, when society regards the majority’s falsehood as truth, could be fatal.

Success is buried on the other side of rejection.