Excellent soldiers are not furious.
If there is anyone here whom I have not insulted, I beg his pardon.
One should never forget that by actually perfecting one piece one gains and learns more than by starting or half-finishing a dozen.
Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.
In my study I can lay my hand on the Bible in the pitch dark. All truly inspired ideas come from God. The powers from which all truly great composers like Mozart, Schubert, Bach and Beethoven drew their inspirations is the same power that enabled Jesus to do his miracles.
Reviewer: 'One of your themes was very similar to one of Beethoven's!' Brahms replied, 'Of course it is. Everyone steals - the important thing is to do it brilliantly.
Study Bach. There you will find everything.
The subjects in my work appear as unidentified ghosts that can't be said to be of this world. I've decided to call them incarnations. In various religions, myths, and legends, the word "incarnation" refers to the birth or emergence of transcendent beings in the form of humans or other bodies. If "incarnation" denotes the appearance of an abstract being in some concrete form, in a gut ceremony, a shaman could be considered an incarnation of our desires, hopes, and sorrows. The incarnations that appear in my work are always new and I meet them for the first time by drawing them.
TV [series] is a six-year decision. It's not four or five weeks. If a filmmaker and I don't get along, it's four weeks of your life, so whatever.
The thing that's really important to understand is, the last thing an empire traditionally does is drive itself into bankruptcy. You've seen that with the great empires.
It is only after that we understand what has come before, then we understand nothing. Thus we shall define the soul as follows: that which precedes everything.