I can't bear to finish things, beyond a certain point they get heavy. There's something so dead about a finished painting.
If people could see into my heart, I should almost feel ashamed - all there is cold, cold as ice.
I am not thoughtless but am prepared for anything and as a result can wait patiently for whatever the future holds in store, and I'll be able to endure it.
I am never happier than when I have something to compose, for that, after all, is my sole delight and passion
Now there is music from which a man can learn something.
To win applause one must write stuff so simple that a coachman might sing it.
When I am traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep; it is on such occasions that ideas flow best and most abundantly.
I mean, I could go ahead and cut my head off in the guillotine, and it looks great,. . . Well, now you turn on CNN and guys are really getting their heads cut off. . . . As insane as our fantasy world gets, it's nowhere near as scary as reality.
I think that if your approach is one where you don't want to alienate anybody, you're going to have to soften the viewpoint or the information that you're offering to such an extent that it doesn't have the power to make any difference. You have to take that risk.
You see, what is my purpose of performance artist is to stage certain difficulties and stage the fear the primordial fear of pain, of dying, all of which we have in our lives, and then stage them in front of audience and go through them and tell the audience, I'm your mirror; if I can do this in my life, you can do it in yours.
But with the Industrial Revolution and introduction of various industrial techniques for purifying sugar, we have a situation in which what we are consuming is not good nutritionally or ecologically.