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Beethoven can write music, thank God, but he can do nothing else on earth.

Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.

If Beethoven had been killed in a plane crash at the age of 22, it would have changed the history of music and of aviation.

In his late quartets, Beethoven introduces an element that shouldn't be there, that should be left for meditation, though I love them. I can see that through them came Wagner and Mahler and Schoenberg and Berg. And then came Tracey Emin. And I can see it all as one downward path.

I'm a Beethoven freak. I listen to him all the time.

Beethoven's music tends to move from chaos to order, as if order were an imperative of human existence.

Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.

Turns out Picasso's passion for uncertainty, mystery, and the thrill of life never ended.

I don't think Beethoven expresses religious truth. He expresses a human truth.