Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

Any subject is good for opera if the composer feels it so intently he must sing it out.

A man only becomes wise when he begins to calculate the approximate depth of his ignorance.

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.

Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.

A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner's 'Lohengrin' - such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music.

As a little boy of 3 or 4, I became lame. Something was wrong with my right leg. There are pictures of me being pulled around in a little wagon. The doctors didn't know what to do. So my nanny took me to the miraculous Madonna at Sacro Monte in Varese, the priest blessed me, and I walked.

At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.

Fate has blessed me.

For better or for worse, in 'The Last Savage,' I have dared to do away completely with fashionable dissonance, and in a modest way, I have endeavored to rediscover the nobility of gracefulness and the pleasure of sweetness.

God gives you the gift of melody or He doesn't - it's as simple as that.

I have always felt that art, especially music, is but a demonstration of God.

I have the feeling that everybody was waiting for me to die so they could rediscover me. Then they found out I'm not dead yet, so they are rediscovering me while I'm still alive.

I loathe my body. The liver spots, the sagging flesh.

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.

I rebelled against the idea of the artist being what I call the 'after-dinner mint' of society. I didn't want them to be just the entertainers, but rather part of the community - the bread, not only the dessert.

I should have worked harder in my life. I suffer from a guilt complex.

It takes a Bobby White to make a tired 90-year-old composer write a song about love.

It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.

Now, all of a sudden, every college and every university has an opera theater. Every little city has its little group.

One lived in the impression that nobody could ever compete with the 'Nutcracker' or 'A Christmas Carol.'

People ask me whether I'm religious. Well, in a certain way, I am.

The only thing that interests me in music is to be able to reach into the, let's call it, 'collective unconscious' of what is noblest in the human spirit, the way you find in the music of Mozart and Beethoven and Verdi that wonderful quality that not a note can be changed.

There are three reasons why I live in Scotland. First, I like silence, and you have to be a millionaire to buy silence in Italy. Second, I like cold weather. Third, in Italy I have too many relatives and know too many people, so I never get a quiet time.

Writing beautiful melodies is not fashionable because it is very difficult to do.

The most important quality in a leader is that of being acknowledged as such. All leaders whose fitness is questioned are clearly lacking in force.

I think that the quality of all bands is steadily improving and it is a pleasant thought to me that perhaps the efforts of Sousa's Band have quickened that interest and improved that quality.

The more excited the rooster gets, the higher his voice goes. He's got a little bit of a Barney Fife quality to him.

I've always done food that can work in a set time frame. The message I'm trying to get across is, it doesn't have to take three days to do this. With planning, you can do a lot and really have quality food every day.

In their search for quality, people seem to be looking for permanency in a time of change.

While advances in scientific research have led to some new and exciting treatments that have enlarged and enhanced the quality and length of human life, we must not lose sight as to what we are trying to accomplish.

Because the quality of living with nature and allowing it to manifest itself is different than the quality of living in a city, especially a dense city.

How you manage yourself as you deal with stuff in your life largely determines the quality of your life.

We got to know the competition very well. In the '50s popcorn made a big growth in sales. Our main push was to produce the best quality and sell in quality retail outlets.

The difference between style and fashion is quality.

Let's talk of a system that transforms all the social organisms into a work of art, in which the entire process of work is included... something in which the principle of production and consumption takes on a form of quality. It's a Gigantic project.

Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer.

If you stop and think about our history, one of the reasons we had an American century and there is an American dream was because at key points in our history we made very bold decisions about making sure that there was very broad, universal access to quality education.

It is quality rather than quantity that matters.

For example, I spent a lot of time with Reagan, both before he ran for governor and when he was running for president. As a print reporter without the cameras, I was able to really test the quality of their minds and their knowledge base.

Get that right, then- if you get the quality right, then the marketability or whatever; your ability to sell videos or your ability to earn money or whatever, will follow naturally. But try to be creatively lead rather than market lead. And that's important to me.

I like good stories. Quality products and character are what's important. Even if the script isn't that strong, if I challenge myself with a great character, I'll go for it.

I wonder what all those Chinese poets sound like in Chinese. I like their distilled quality.

When I decided I wanted to be an actor, I said I wanted to work with quality actors and directors.

A film that is bleached tends to have a more realistic quality.

In a way, the sense of quality has improved, the status symbol of the small things is gone, and it is acceptable to use stainless steel, even if the neighbour uses silver.

Greatness, generally speaking, is an unusual quantity of a usual quality grafted upon a common man.