Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

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

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

Comedy is the blues for people who can?t sing.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

Music can change the world because it can change people.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

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

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

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

I think another thing is that we don't really want exclusivity. We accept that it is in the artist's interest to be on sale in every place where they sell music.

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

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

To play without passion is inexcusable!

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

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.

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

One thing that really appeals to me is this idea of music being a living thing that has an evolution that, in a way, enables the artist to sell a process rather than a piece of product.

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

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