If you asked me what is the basis of all my work, it's the feeling there's something basically wrong with human beings.

The average man is a conformist, accepting miseries and disasters with the stoicism of a cow standing in the rain.

A symphony is a stage play with the parts written for instruments instead of for actors.

The visionary disciplines himself to see the world always as if he had only just seen it for the first time.

Life itself is an exile. The way home is not the way back.

The real issue is not whether two and two make four or whether two and two make five, but whether life advances by men who love words or by men who love living.

As a young man I was scornful about the supernatural but as I have got older, the sharp line that divided the credible from the incredible has tended to blur; I am aware that the whole world is slightly incredible