“Some people make tunes, but it is lines that run like moving messages through my head. Whatever else I am saying and doing often has no bearing on this inner, verbal life.”

“My life is music, and in some vague, mysterious and subconscious way, I have always been driven by a taut inner spring which has propelled me to almost compulsively reach for perfection in music, often - in fact, mostly - at the expense of everything else in my life.”

“Most people, when they move, well they just move depending on whatever's around them. At this very moment, as I am writing, Constitution the cat is going by with her tummy dragging close to the floor. This cat has absolutely nothing constructive to do in life and still she is heading toward something, probably an armchair.”

“Do you think that I want to live in a communal society with people like that Battaglia acquaintance of yours, sweeping streets and breaking up rocks or whatever it is people are always doing in those blighted countries? What I want is a good, strong monarchy with a tasteful and decent king who has some knowledge of theology and geometry and to cultivate a Rich Inner Life.”

“Life so often becomes a determined, relentless avoidance of pain - of one's own, of other people's. But sometimes pain has to be acknowledged and even touched so that one can move into it and through it and past it. Or else be destroyed by it.”

“Does this mean that my life has been nothing but a process through which I am giving concrete form to the dormant image inside me? And how much responsibility do I bear … ?”