The only escape from the miseries of life are music and cats...

And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinking.

One thing that really appeals to me is this idea of music being a living thing that has an evolution that, in a way, enables the artist to sell a process rather than a piece of product.

Music is mediator between spiritual and sensual life.

Art is permitted to survive only if it renounces the right to be different, and integrates itself into the omnipotent realm of the profane.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

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

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

I don't know anything about music. In my line you don't have to.

Every work of art is an uncommitted crime.

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

After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.

Let silence be the art you practice.

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.

Music is the one incorporeal entrance into the higher world of knowledge which comprehends mankind but which mankind cannot comprehend.

Rhythm is something you either have or don't have, but when you have it, you have it all over.

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

Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best; for that we must have recourse to art.

The true art of memory is the art of attention.

I have a genuine love affair with my audience. When I`m on stage they`re not privileged to see me. It`s a privilege for me to see them.

Adding sound to movies would be like putting lipstick on the Venus de Milo.