Gian Carlo Menotti

I can sit on a chair with a score and give myself a wonderful performance.

The creation of Spoleto was a social experiment. Because I've always suffered guilt from being a Catholic, when I was in my fifties I felt a need of being needed.

As a little boy of 3 or 4, I became lame. Something was wrong with my right leg. There are pictures of me being pulled around in a little wagon. The doctors didn't know what to do. So my nanny took me to the miraculous Madonna at Sacro Monte in Varese, the priest blessed me, and I walked.

My advice to composers is, 'Try to reach 90, and everyone will love you.'

It takes a Bobby White to make a tired 90-year-old composer write a song about love.

I have a heart problem, so I have to simplify my life and be content with memories and friends and music.

I should have worked harder in my life. I suffer from a guilt complex.

Waiting and hoping are the whole of life, and as soon as a dream is realized it is destroyed.

Hell begins on the day when God grants us a clear vision of all that we might have achieved, of all the gifts which we have wasted, of all that we might have done which we did not do.

It was my contention that opera can not only pay for itself if it is well given, but it can also command a much wider audience if given like a play with lots of rehearsals and wonderful singers that fit the role.

For better or for worse, in 'The Last Savage,' I have dared to do away completely with fashionable dissonance, and in a modest way, I have endeavored to rediscover the nobility of gracefulness and the pleasure of sweetness.

I rebelled against the idea of the artist being what I call the 'after-dinner mint' of society. I didn't want them to be just the entertainers, but rather part of the community - the bread, not only the dessert.