The true art of memory is the art of attention.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Artistic temperament is a disease that afflicts amateurs.

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.

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

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

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

Everything in the universe has a rhythm, everything dances.

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

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

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