Champagne arrived in flûtes on trays, and we emptied them with gladness in our hearts... for when feasts are laid and classical music is played, where champagne is drunk once the sun has sunk and the season of summer is alive in spicy bloom, and beautiful women fill the room, and are generous with laughter and smiles... these things fill men's hearts with joy and remind one that life’s bounty is not always fleeting but can be captured, and enjoyed. It is in writing about this scene that I relive this night in my soul.

Sometimes, when inspiration runs dry, I drink classical music until my words spill out.

Liberace was certainly master and commander of the ivories ~ he is the only pianist I can watch or listen to without suffering a case of 'Stagefright Sympathy Sickness'.

Art doesn’t give rise to anything in us that isn’t already there. It simply stirs our curious consciousness and sparks a fire that illuminates who we have always wanted to be.

Because even if you spend your life chasing the immaterial, listening to the most exquisite classical music and getting drunk off of stunning vistas of mountains and waterfalls, all of it isn't worth a dime if you aren’t sharing it with someone. Everything amounts to that. True, we must experience most things in solitude to grow, create, destroy and grow again, but our pleasure and joy reaches a threshold in isolation. It is the worst thing to become an island. One must become the whole world.

If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.

Modern man is full of platitudes about living life to its fullest, with catchy keychain phrases and little plaques for kitchen walls. But if you've never retreated to the solitude of a dark room and listened to Beethoven's Ninth from start to finish, you know nothing. For music is a transcendental exploration of human emotion and experience, the very fabric of life in its purest form. And the Ninth our greatest musical achievement.

Now that rock is turning 50, it's become classical itself. It's interesting to see that development.

Robert Kapilow is a born teacher, an enthusiast who can think on his feet, a 110 percent believer in the project at hand ... It’s a cheering thought that this kind of missionary enterprise did not pass from this earth with Leonard Bernstein. Robert Kapilow is awfully good at what he does. We need him.

If you are going to hear the work of the world’s greatest composers, you will have to allow for a little murder here and there. […] Those who want justice can go to the police, but those who want something a little more interesting should go to the orchestra!

Rachmaninoff. The 18th Variation of a Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Classical music is the best, and cheapest, mind-altering drug in the world.

A love of classical music is only partially a natural response to hearing the works performed; it also must come about by a decision to listen carefully, to pay close attention, a decision inevitably motivated by the cultural and social prestige of the art.

Violinists wear the imprint on their necks with prideFor they are the players of harmony.Pilgrims, too, wear the imprint on their foreheads with prideFor they are the conductors of unity.And Lovers? Why, they are made humble by the imprint on their heartsFor they are merely the instruments of rhapsody.

The power of classical music turns my words into fire.

There was that sound again--snap, then a footfall. She tried to whirl around as a dark form--Dear God--sprang with a splash from the darkness--grabbed her from behind, shoved her under the water.

In a timepiece, a sweep of a second hand is so slim in a way that it doesn't wait for no man, and that's why we choose to conceive things from the heart.

Sometimes in the great soundtrack of our lives there are no words, there are only emotions; I believe this is why God gave us classical music.

I shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end.