Whatever my passions demand of me, I become for the time being - musician, poet, director, author, lecturer or anything else.

I know nothing at all about music.

Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.

The sounds proceeding from the instruments of symphonic music seem to be the very organs of the mysteries of creation; for they reveal, as it were, the primal stirrings of creation which brought order out of chaos long before the human heart was there to behold them.

Any so-called stimulus program is a ruse. The government can increase its spending only by reducing private spending equivalently.

It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless; he doesn't talk at all.

When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain.