If music in general is an imitation of history, opera in particular is an imitation of human willfulness; it is rooted in the fact that we not only have feelings but insist upon having them at whatever cost to ourselves. The quality common to all the great operatic roles, e.g., Don Giovanni, Norma, Lucia, Tristan, Isolde, Br?nnhilde, is that each of them is a passionate and willful state of being. In real life they would all be bores, even Don Giovanni.

Love each other or perish.

Poetry might be defined as the clear expression of mixed feelings.

History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.

A real book is not one that we read, but one that reads us.

Like everything which is not the involuntary result of fleeting emotion but the creation of time and will, any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting than any romance, however passionate.

Murder is commoner among cooks than among members of any other profession.