“It makes me madder than a hornet to be disbelieved,” she explained.
Who is there who has not felt a sudden startled pang at reliving an old experience or feeling an old emotion?
Like great works, deep feelings always mean more than they are conscious of saying.
If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music. … I cannot tell if I would have done any creative work of importance in music, but I do know that I get most joy in life out of my violin.
The really good music, whether of the East or of the West, cannot be analyzed.
As long as I can remember, I have suffered because of the great misery I saw in the world. I never really knew the artless, youthful joy of living, and I believe that many children feel this way, even when outwardly they seem to be wholly happy and without a single care.
Music is an ocean, but the repertory is hardly even a lake; it is a pond.
If good music has charms to soothe the savage breast, bad music has no less powerful spells for filling the mildest breast with rage, the happiest with horror and disgust. Oh, those mammy songs, those love longings, those loud hilarities! How was it possible that human emotions intrinsically decent could be so ignobly parodied.
After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music.