Gian Carlo Menotti

At the premieres, I always watch the audience. If a child asks to go to the bathroom, I know I've failed.

People ask me whether I'm religious. Well, in a certain way, I am.

A Schubert song, the A-major chord at the opening of Wagner's 'Lohengrin' - such incredible beauty is a mystery, the divinity of music.

Art is the unceasing effort to compete with the beauty of flowers - and never succeeding.

The only thing that interests me in music is to be able to reach into the, let's call it, 'collective unconscious' of what is noblest in the human spirit, the way you find in the music of Mozart and Beethoven and Verdi that wonderful quality that not a note can be changed.

I really don't think I have that much of the gift; I have a little bit, but I wish I were Schubert or Chopin or Beethoven, though Beethoven had a very difficult time writing melody, too.

There are three reasons why I live in Scotland. First, I like silence, and you have to be a millionaire to buy silence in Italy. Second, I like cold weather. Third, in Italy I have too many relatives and know too many people, so I never get a quiet time.

Melody is a form of remembrance. It must have a quality of inevitability in our ears.