Divine fires do not blaze each day but an artist functions in their afterglow, hoping for their recurrence.

Greatness is not the effect of which inspiration is the cause. We are all inspired, but we are all not great.

The hardest of all the arts to speak of is music, because music has no meaning to speak of

As a lifelong pacifist, Quaker, and a gay man, I despair that gays and lesbians are expending energy trying to get into the military when they should be using that same energy getting rid of the military completely.

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

The art of translation lies less in knowing the other language than in knowing your own.

It's not evil that's ruining the earth, but mediocrity. The crime is not that Nero played while Rome burned, but that he played badly.