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.

If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.

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.

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

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

Music is the sole art which evokes nostalgia for the future.