Nothing is a waste that makes a memory.

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.

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

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.

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

Martyrdom has always been a proof of the intensity never of the correctness of a belief.

Competition is healthy, if you can turn it off and on. When someone gets too cocky in victory, that can ruin the positive aspect.

Just once I'd like someone to call me 'Sir' without adding 'You're making a scene.'

I'm beginning to think that maybe everything that happens makes sense. Like, if it didn't make sense, how could it happen?

The first condition of humaneness is a little humility and a little diffidence about the correctness of one's conduct and a little receptiveness.

Sin makes you stupid.

I do not believe it is in our nature to love impartially. We deceive ourselves when we think we can love two beings, even our own children, equally. There is always a dominant affection.

I didn't begin my life in 1975 with 'Horses.' I recorded 'Horses' in 1975, but was drawing in Paris in 1969.

There are a few directors around who I have some excitement about spending my $7 at the theatre watching their movies.

Everyone is an abused child, if you think about what governments do.