I don’t believe in total freedom for the artist. Left on his own, free to do anything he likes, the artist ends up doing nothing at all. If there’s one thing that’s dangerous for an artist, it’s precisely this question of total freedom, waiting for inspiration and all the rest of it.

When we see a natural style we are quite amazed and delighted, because we expected to see an author and find a man.

Were I called on to define, very briefly, the term art, I should call it “the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature through the veil of the soul.” The mere imitation, however accurate, of what is in nature, entitles no man to the sacred name of “artist.”

Art imitates nature as well as it can, as a pupil follows his master; thus it is a sort of grandchild of God.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.