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

Rhythm is something you either have or don't have, but when you have it, you have it all over.

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

The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats...

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

People ask me how I make music. I tell them I just step into it. It's like stepping into a river and joining the flow. Every moment in the river has its song.

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

We're not trying to change the world; just music.

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

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

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

The music industry can make you feel like a prostitute.

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.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

Once you become predictable, no one's interested anymore.

Music in the soul can be heard by the universe.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

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