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.

If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.

Let silence be the art you practice.

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.

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.

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

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

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

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.

Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.

Critics are the men who have failed in literature and art.

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

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

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

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

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

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