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.

Minor artists borrow, great ones steal.

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

Compose first, worry later.

Why, after all, must everyone like music? That they are missing something is just the lover's opinion.

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.

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