Rather than say art is art and life is life, I like to say that they're joined and inextricable.
My private measure of success is daily. If this were to be the last day of my life would I be content with it? To live in a harmonious balance of commitments and pleasures is what I strive for.
When people come to write about my period of office, I would be very happy if they say that I made a contribution to finding the happy medium again for the Germans.
I'll buy a bottle for anyone who can tell me what makes a picture beautiful!
As for design, I gravitate to traditional styles but mix it with an element of surprise. Whether it's a big sash bow in the back or an unexpected fabric, it all needs to work together.
It is easier to feel than to realize, or in any way explain, Yosemite grandeur. The magnitudes of the rocks and trees and streams are so delicately harmonized, they are mostly hidden.
The rule of joy and the law of duty seem to me all one.
When the Sacred Masculine is combined with the sacred feminine inside each of us, we create the 'sacred marriage' of compassion and passion in ourselves.
A good impression is sort of a juxtaposition of disparate elements.
The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.
Nature is a gentle guide, but not more sweet and gentle than prudent and just.
All nature has come to expect from God a sense of orderliness. Whatever God does carries with it His fingerprint. And in the world around us His fingerprint of orderliness is evident to anybody who is honest with the facts. If you look at nature, you will discover a mathematical exactness. Without this precision, the entire world would be in utter confusion. One plus one always equals two no matter what part of the universe you happen to be in. And the laws of nature operate in beautiful harmony, a harmony that is ordered by God Himself.
I think the thing that we agreed to so many years ago, actually, was that the music didn't have to support the dance nor the dance illustrate the music, but they could be two things going on at the same time.
Sometimes the picture that emerges of the man seems no longer to agree with our conception of the musician. In reality, however, there is a glorious unity.
A composition is always more than the sum of its parts. In other words, a really good piece of music is more than itself. It's sort of like a prism, which you can see from each facet a single totality.
In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.
When I write a song, I get the melody right first, and then hopefully I can back it up with a lyric that has to respect the melody.
Our life contains a thousand springs, And dies if one be gone. Strange! that a harp of thousand strings Should keep in tune so long.
There is beauty in everything.
It is not hard to compose but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table. . . So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to tread on them.
There's a moment of recognition. It's that white-light kind of stuff that just 'works.' I love that. And you know it when it happens, whether it's a movie, music, a building, a book.
Society, like nature, is one body, really.
It's so funny to see the evolution in my music and personal style as a whole because, for me, they all work together as art. As my music changes, I'm compelled to change my hair, clothes, or shoes. It all has to be cohesive.
I don't believe in the separation between mankind and nature. Mankind is nature.
It is a miracle of harmony, of the adaptation of the free inner life to the outward necessity of things.
