Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning … except its own.

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time… The wait is simply too long.

I’ve been all over the world and I’ve never seen a statue of a critic.

I’m no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another…and leaves us with...

To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.

A liberal is a man or a woman or a child who looks forward to a better day, a more tranquil night, and a bright, infinite future.

Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world – the extent to which...

The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us are endowed with the powers of...

Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

This will be our reply to violence:to make music more intensely,more beautifully,more devotedly than ever before.