I stay true to my lyrics. If I go back and look at them in hindsight, the emotions I had when I wrote them have passed. It feels unjustified to change them.
If Beethoven is a prodigy of man, Bach is a miracle of God.
The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.
Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.
Eating, loving, singing, and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life, and they pass like bubbles of a bottle of champagne. Whoever lets them break without having enjoyed them is a complete fool.
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.
The reality is you've got to be yourself. You've got to be who you are. You've got to be honest with people. If your views change on something, you've got to be willing to express it.
All that remains to the mother in modern consumer society is the role of scapegoat; psychoanalysis uses huge amounts of money and time to persuade analysis and to foist their problems on to the absent mother, who has no opportunity to utter a word in her own defence. Hostility to the mother in our societies is an index of mental health.
If school principals have given up on the important things and are focusing on discipline, they are creating a certain, diluted reality. In an organization that functions properly, discipline should be a marginal issue.
Always make a total effort, even when the odds are against you.