Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.

The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

One can't judge Wagner's opera Lohengrin after a first hearing, and I certainly don't intend to hear it a second time.

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity.

Beethoven I take twice a week, Haydn four times, and Mozart every day.

Music is a kind of harmonious language.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.

Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .

If Beethoven is a prodigy of man, Bach is a miracle of God.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

When women are secret they are secret indeed and more often then not they only begin to be secret with the advent of a second lover.

Without slavery the rebellion could never have existed; without slavery it could not continue.

I don't want to be smart, because being smart makes you depressed.

I don't intend to retire.

If 50 million people say a stupid thing, it's still a stupid thing.

America does, in the future, need to have a conversation with and try to move forward with Russia.

Satan does not tempt us just to make us do wrong things- he tempts us to make us lose what God has put into us through regeneration, namely, the possibility of being of value to God.

Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can make me think I deserved it.

The truest indication of gratitude is to return what you are grateful for.