You are given the gifts of the gods; you create your reality according to your beliefs.
Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.
It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.
The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother's face and finds himself therein. . . provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother's face, but rather the mother's own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain.
There is no such thing as a baby, there is a baby and someone.
It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.
I would rather be the child of a mother who has all the inner conflicts of the human being than be mothered by someone for whom all is easy and smooth, who knows all the answers, and is a stranger to doubt.
The energy available for each individual man is his income, and the philosophy which can teach him to be content with penury should be capable of teaching him also the uses of wealth.
Composing a concert is like composing a menu. . . . If you start with light pieces and play a 45-minute sonata after the interlude, it's like starting dinner with hors d'oeuvres and dessert and finishing with a Châteaubriand and vegetables.
There were tens of thousands of pilgrims, from all over the world. They were of all colors, from blue-eyed blondes to black-skinned Africans. But we were all participating in the same ritual, displaying a spirit of unity and brotherhood that my experiences in America had led me to believe never could exist between the white and non-white.
I will not doubt, though sorrows fall like rain, And troubles swarm like bees about a hive; I shall believe the heights for which I strive Are only reached by anguish and by pain; And though I groan and tremble with my crosses, I yet shall see, through my severest losses, The greater gain.