Hopefully before I'm done, I can be on an Olympic team.
The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.
A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.
I don't diet. There's going to be barbecues and macaroni and cheese - but I'll have broccoli and salad the next day.
Our colonizers have taught us to believe that our health has improved because of Western medicine, Western foods, and Western technology. In a society that values progress, our colonizers taught us that conditions in the world are perpetually improving, that with each new technological advancement, each new discovery, each new way to utilize resources, each new way to alter the environment, that the world is getting better, that it is advancing. These are all lies.
I believe in the pure Surrealist joy of the man who, forewarned that all others before him have failed, refused to admit defeat, sets off from watever point he chooses, along any other pat save a reasonable one, and arrives wherever he can.
Every subject's duty is the King's; but every subject's soul is his own. Therefore, should every soldier in the wars do as every sick man in his bed, wash every mote out of his conscience; and dying so, death is to him advantage; or not dying, the time was blessedly lost wherein such preparation was gained; and in him that escapes, it were no sin to think that, making God so free an offer, He let him outlive the day to see His greatness and to teach others how they should prepare.