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

Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

Music melts all the separate parts of our bodies together.

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

Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside

Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.

I can't listen to that much Wagner. I start getting the urge to conquer Poland.

Art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time

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

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

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

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

I'm very happy to hear that my work inspires writers and painters. It's the most beautiful compliment, the greatest reward. Art should always be an exchange.

It's so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.

Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.

Each song is a child I nourish and give my love to. But even if you have never written a song, your life is a song. How can it not be?

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

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