You must always believe that life is as extraordinary as music says it is.

I see the main problem of my life, and indeed anybody's life, as the balancing of competitive freedoms ... a sense of mutual obligations that have to be honored, and a legal system which can be trusted to step in when that sense fails.

Human beings are mercifully so constituted as to be able to conceal from themselves what they intend to do until they are well into the doing of it.

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths which are too complicated; he forgets truths which are too simple.

Why must you always try to be omnipotent, and shove things about? Tragic things happen sometimes that we just have to submit to.

Existence in itself, taken at its least miraculous, is a miracle.

There is, of course, no reason for the existence of the male sex except that one sometimes needs help with moving the piano.