Perfection is no more a requisite to art than to heroes. Frigidaires are perfect. Beauty limps. My frigidaire has had to be replaced.

In music the present is extended.

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

The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty.

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

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.

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.