The best of Mozart's works cannot be even slightly rewritten without diminishment.

If London is a watercolor, New York is an oil painting.

Rehearsing a play is making the word flesh. Publishing a play is reversing the process.

The Normal is the good smile in a child’s eyes - all right. It is also the dead stare in a million adults.

Watching Italian opera, all those male sopranos screeching, stupid fat couples rolling their eyes about. That's not love, it's just rubbish.

I speak for all mediocrities in the world. I am their champion. I am their patron saint.

He'll be delivered from madness. What then? He'll feel himself acceptable! What then? Do you think feelings like his can be simply re-attached, like plasters? Stuck on to other objects we select? Look at him! ... My desire might be to make this boy an ardent husband - a caring citizen - a worshipper of abstract and unifying God. My achievement, however, is more likely to make a ghost!