“I was born to make mistakes, not to be perfect.”
“Music is poetry with personality”
“Better, perhaps, to dress like a whore around the clock and thus achieve a fully integrated personality.”
“We see but one aspect of our neighbor, as we see but one side of the moon; in either case there is also a dark half, which is unknown to us. We all come down to dinner, but each has a room to himself.”
“I feel very transparent in myself. I’m more of an observer. I’m interested in what’s going on. I’m not sure that I really have a personality. Some people think I do have a personality. I have a personality when I am with certain people — but when I’m not with them I don’t have that personality. I just sort of go back to resembling a transparent glass of water.”
“The art of biography is more difficult than is generally supposed.”
“He was a six and a half foot scowl. (on Rachmaninov)”
“He gives me the impression of being a spoilt child. (on Liszt)”
“Life is, if anything, the art of combination. Of discrimination. Of freely picking one s own personal pattern out of a hundred choices. Not letting it be picked for you—either by the Establishment, or by the Rebels. Conformity of Hip is no better than Conformity of Square.”
“It s sweet and everything, but it s like you re not even there sometimes. It s great that you can listen and be a shoulder to someone, but what about when someone doesn t need a shoulder? What if they need the arms or something like that? You can t just sit there and put everybody s lives ahead of yours and think that counts as love. You just can t. You have to do things. Like what? I asked. My mouth was dry. I don t know. Like take their hands when the slow song comes up for a change. Or be the one who asks someone for a date. Or tell people what you need. Or what you want.”
“A person with no enemies is a person with no personality.”
“Crisis doesn t change people; it reveals them.”
“And on the threshold of being no more I succeed in being another.”