Gifted women musicians and composers rarely received their due.

The artists are the most powerful ones, the creators, first are the painters, working without words, second are the music composers, and third are the writers.

History's greatest composers would be appalled to hear their greatest works reduced to distorted hold music for businesses.

Beethoven introduced us to anger. Haydn taught us capriciousness, Rachmaninoff melancholy. Wagner was demonic. Bach was pious. Schumann was mad, and because his genius was able to record his fight for sanity, we heard what isolation and the edge of lunacy sounded like. Liszt was lusty and vigorous and insisted that we confront his overwhelming sexuality as well as our own. Chopin was a poet, and without him we never would have understood what night was, what perfume was, what romance was.

I have tremendous respect for film composers.

He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child.(on Liszt).

A brilliant mind was first a listener that observed the actions of the people that loved and hated them, then found a way to express their feelings, when real communication was lost.

He was a six and a half foot scowl.(on Rachmaninov).

Think it a vile habit to alter works of good composers, to omit parts of them, or to insert new-fashioned ornaments. This is the greatest insult you can offer to Art.