The great achievement of the Catholic Church lay in harmonizing, civilizing the deepest impulses of ordinary, ignorant people.

Of all these questions the one he asks most insistently is about man. How does he walk? How does the heart pump blood? What happens when he yawns and sneezes? How does a child live in the womb? Why does he die of old age?

Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process.

A visual experience is vitalizing. Whereas to write great poetry, to draw continuously on one's inner life, is not merely exhausting, it is to keep alight a consuming fire.

True perfection is achieved only by those who are prepared to destroy it. It is a by-product of greatness.