“I've been all over the world and I've never seen a statue of a critic.”

“Any great art work … revives and readapts time and space, and the measure of its success is the extent to which it makes you an inhabitant of that world - the extent to which it invites you in and lets you breathe its strange, special air.”

“Music, of all the arts, stands in a special region, unlit by any star but its own, and utterly without meaning ... except its own.”

“Music . . . can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.”

“Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.”

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.”

“To achieve great things, two things are needed: a plan and not quite enough time.”