Comedy is the blues for people who can?t sing.

You use a glass mirror to see your face; you use works of art to see your soul.

Artistic talent is a gift from God and whoever discovers it in himself has a certain obligation: to know that he cannot waste this talent, but must develop it.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it, I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

Every day brings a chance for you to draw in a breath, kick off your shoes, and dance.

Poets and heroes are of the same race, the latter do what the former conceive.

The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance.

Each song is a child I nourish and give my love to. But even if you have never written a song, your life is a song. How can it not be?

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

Music doesn't lie. If there is something to be changed in this world, then it can only happen through music.

Music should be something that makes you gotta move, inside or outside

The spoken form is in fact a very restrained representation of what is possible in the musical language.

Play it fuckin' loud!

Real popular culture is folk art - coalminers' songs and so forth.

I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them.

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.

Music with dinner is an insult, both to the cook and the violinist.

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.