If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.

If music could be translated into human speech, it would no longer need to exist.

To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time for registering those of yesterday.

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.

Don't be too dismissive of children. While it's true that few children are artists, all artists are children.

The Great don't innovate, they fertilize seeds planted by lackeys, they leave to others the inhaling of the flowers whose roots they've manured. A deceptive memory may be the key to their originality.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.