I haven't understood a single piece of music in my life, but I have felt it.
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.
Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right
My childhood was a peroid of waiting to the moment when i could send everyone in it to hell.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.
The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.
I am an inventor of music.
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.