“I've rediscovered the part of my brain that can't decode anything, that can't add, that can't work from a verbalized concept, that doesn't care about stylish notation, that makes melodies that have pitch and rhythm, that doesn't know anything about zen eternity and gets bored and changes, that isn't worried about being commercial or avant-garde or serial or any other little category. Beauty is enough.”

“I have this kind of philosophy that I can't do anything about what happened yesterday, or what's going to happen tomorrow. But I feel in full control of what's going on now. I think worry will make you sick. I've never seen it accomplish anything. I've never seen worrying about anything change it. So I decided not to do it. If you can't do anything about it, why in the hell worry about it? Every negative thought you have releases poison into your system, and will kill you or give you cancer, or tumors or whatever else you can think of. So if you are thinking negative about anything, erase that.”

“I know it can't be the same between us, but that doesn't change the way I felt about you then.”

“You can't start worrying about what's going to happen. You get spastic enough worrying about what's happening now.”

“I believed all that stuff about pleasing myself. Can't be done. You can't please yourself by doing what you want. Because it doesn't mean anything if it's just you. There has to be somebody it matters to.”

“All I care to know about a man is that he is a human being… he can't be any worse.”

“You can't ask a man to talk sensibly about the art of painting if he simply doesn't know anything about it. But by God, how can he [ Zola was his youth friend, who used Cezanne as a model in Zola's novel 'L'Oeuvre'] dare to say that a painter is done because he has painted one bad picture? When a picture isn't realized, you pitch it in the fire and start another one.”

“Wealth or no wealth, you can't keep someone else under your feet forever. False love doesn't care about the environment.”

“Youth is a circumstance you can't do anything about. The trick is to grow up without getting old.”

“I can't accept the title, to win it this way doesn't mean anything to me.”