Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .

Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .

Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair.

The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

Eating, loving, singing, and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life, and they pass like bubbles of a bottle of champagne. Whoever lets them break without having enjoyed them is a complete fool.