The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.

Music should strike fire from the heart of man, and bring tears from the eyes of woman.

The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.

Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

Let us read, and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

The absence of limitations is the enemy of art.

A man is a success if he gets up in the morning and gets to bed at night, and in between he does what he wants to do.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

A great poet is the most precious jewel of a nation.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

When you were young, and your heart, was an open book. You used to say, live and let live.

Rock and roll music, if you like it, if you feel it, you can't help but move to it. That's what happens to me. I can't help it.

And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.

Let silence be the art you practice.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.