An artist's duty is rather to stay open-minded and in a state where he can receive information and inspiration. You always have to be ready for that little artistic Epiphany.

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

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

The art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters, is simplicity.

Art is magic delivered from the lie of being truth.

Every actor in his heart believes everything bad that's printed about him.

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

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

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.

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

Play it fuckin' loud!

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

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.

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

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

Music with dinner is an insult, both to the cook and the violinist.

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.

I accept chaos, I'm not sure whether it accepts me.

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.

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

Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends.