What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul.

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

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

I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.

Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel.

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

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.