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

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

Art is never finished, only abandoned.

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.

Intellectual passion drives out sensuality.

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

I love rock-n-roll. I think it's an exciting art form. It's revolutionary. Still revolutionary and it changed people. It changed their hearts. But yeah, even rock-n-roll has a lot of rubbish, really bad music.

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.

We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth.

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

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

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.

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

Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.

Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.

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

Art not only imitates nature, but also completes its deficiencies.

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

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

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