I am talking about societies drained of their essence, cultures trampled underfoot, institutions undermined, lands confiscated, religions smashed, magnificent artistic creations destroyed, extraordinary possibilities wiped out.

It’s probable that in the artistic hierarchy birds are the greatest musicians existing on our planet.

There are two kinds of success. One is musical or artistic and the other is commercial.

Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented.

The great moral teachers of humanity were in a way artistic geniuses in the art of living.

When you put a tremendous amount of love into your work, as in any relationship, you can’t know – you can only hope – that what you’re offering will in some way be received. You shape your love to artistic demands, to the rigors of your genre. But still, it’s a labor of love, and it’s the nature of love that you must give it freely.