The more disastrous the mishaps the simpler the reviewing task.

It might be argued that genuine spontaneity is not really possible or desirable so long as printed scores of great works exist. All modern musicians are, for better or worse, prisoners of Gutenberg.

On the subject of wild mushrooms, it is easy to tell who is an expert and who is not: The expert is the one who is still alive.

The human brain can soften as a result of incessant listening to music with an intent to commit prose.

Next to the writer of real estate advertisements, the autobiographer is the most suspect of prose artists.

[Rubinstein was] a fountain from which music spouted, not a recitalist.

Real folk music long ago went to Nashville and left no known survivors.

The irrepressible spirit that made his playing seem like good conversation is the Rubinstein legacy for pianists, if they can pick up their heads from the keyboard long enough to claim it.

Being comfortable with the lies can be catastrophic.

We have the opportunity to move not only toward the rich society and the powerful society, but upward to the Great Society.

People are under the illusion that it's easy...Technically, it is complex. You have a million options with equipment to distract you. I tell my students to simplify their equipment.

A fitting room to me has always been like a confessional ... where my body and my contrition take up the entire room.

Without rebuilding the confidence between parties, you will never succeed.

The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.

England always seems to me like a man swimming with his clothes on his head.

Can it be that even as one grows to fit the space one lives in, one cannot grow until there's space to grow?

The poets who do this are uniquely conscious of this silence, this stillness.

Toil for the brave! The brave that are no more.