“Basic research is what I am doing when I don’t know what I am doing.”

“It is unbecoming for young men to utter maxims.”

“Cats are intended to teach us that not everything in nature has a function.”

“I know who I am. No one else knows who I am. If I was a giraffe, and someone said I was a snake, I’d think, no, actually I’m a giraffe.”

“That is the saving grace of humor, if you fail no one is laughing at you.”

“Mathematics, rightly viewed, possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty – a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture.”

“Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.”

“Every composer knows the anguish and despair occasioned by forgetting ideas which one had no time to write down.”

“No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”

“No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.”