To see itself through, music must have idea or magic. ... Music with neither dies young though rich.

Bel canto is to opera what pole-vaulting is to ballet.

All men are forced into one of two categories: those with eleven fingers and those without.

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.

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

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.

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.