As Death, When We Come To Consider

All I Insist On, And Nothing Else, Is That You Should Show The Whole World That You Are Not Afraid. Be Silent, If You Choose; But When It Is Necessary, Speak—and Speak In Such A Way That People Will Remember It.

I Love It When An Aria Fits A Singer As Perfectly As A Suit Of Well-tailored Clothes.

Music Is My Life And My Life Is Music. Anyone Who Does Not Understand This Is Not Worthy Of God.

I Have Never Written The Music That Was In My Heart To Write; Perhaps I Never Shall With This Brain And These Fingers, But I Know That Hereafter It Will Be Written; When Instead Of These Few Inlets Of The Senses Through Which We Now Secure Impressions From Without, There Shall Be A Flood Of Impressions From All Sides; And Instead Of These Few Tones Of Our Little Octave, There Shall Be An Infinite Scale Of Harmonies - For I Feel It - I Am Sure Of It. This World Of Music, Whose Borders Even Now I Have Scarcely Entered, Is A Reality, Is Immortal.

I Cannot Write In Verse, For I Am No Poet. I Cannot Arrange The Parts Of Speech With Such Art As To Produce Effects Of Light And Shade, For I Am No Painter. Even By Signs And Gestures I Cannot Express My Thoughts And Feelings, For I Am No Dancer. But I Can Do So By Means Of Sounds, For I Am A Musician.