"I've managed to dodge the curse. Not all my family have. Of course, music helped me - music is all about civilization, about something worthwhile. It's all about ideas"

"Music is my religion"

"Peace is the virtue of civilization. War is its crime"

"America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between"

"If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away"

"Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty and dies with chaos"

"I've always been into melodies. That's what I love about music – a good melody that gives you goosebumps"

"The mother art is architecture. Without an architecture of our own we have no soul of our own civilization"

"We worked very hard to make the lyrics suit the music. I can't, like Elton John, for example, compose by lyrics. Elton has a great talent for that. Whatever you give him, including your questions, he composes in half an hour and makes a great song out of it"

"Music is the shorthand of emotion"

"A nation creates music - the composer only arranges it"