The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm

Mozart's music is constantly escaping from its frame, because it cannot be contained in it.

Wine snobbery, of course, is part showmanship, part sophistication, part knowledge, and part bluff

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

Music, because of its specific and far-reaching metaphorical powers, can name the unnamable and communicate the unknowable.

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.

You can sit there, tense and worried, freezing the creative energies, or you can start writing something. It doesn't matter what. In five or ten minutes, the imagination will heat, the tightness will fade, and a certain spirit and rhythm will take over.