It kills your writing if you try to manipulate it with crude politics.
Two years of close association with some of the best (as well as some of the worst) tunes in the world was a better musical education than any amount of sonatas and fugues.
The art of music above all the other arts is the expression of the soul of a nation.
I have always found it difficult to study. I have learnt almost entirely what I have learnt by trying it out on the dog.
Music is the reaching out towards the utmost realities by means of ordered sound.
The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one (this is specially true of the Viennese) and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is "wrong" and arises from insular ignorance.
It never seems to occur to people that a man might just want to write a piece of music.
I write and rewrite and rewrite and write and like to turn in what I think is finished work.
Women are more verbal than men. That's why when you see an elderly couple together, it's always the man who has the hearing aid.
If I'd had more time or been a better writer, I would have tried to put the same ideas and experiences into a novel. But I didn't so I slapped it up on the Web.
Yellow wakes me up in the morning. Yellow gets me on the bike every day. Yellow has taught me the true meaning of sacrifice. Yellow makes me suffer. Yellow is the reason I'm here.