The hope of the world lies in what one demands, not of others, but of oneself.

Most of us are about as eager to change as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock.

People are too various to be treated so lightly. I am too various to be trusted.

Talent is insignificant. I know a lot of talented ruins. Beyond talent lie all the usual words: discipline, love, luck, but, most of all, endurance.

All I know about music is that not many people ever really hear it.

Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.

Europe has what we [Americans] do not have yet, a sense of the mysterious and inexorable limits of life, a sense, in a word, of tragedy. And we have what they sorely need: a sense of life's possibilities.