My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.

Silence, which will save from shame, will also deprive me of fame.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street any more without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.

An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.

Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.