Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

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.

What force is more potent than love?

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God.

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?

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.

Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

I am an inventor of music.

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed and as we are already flying pilotless on instrument controls it is even too late to ask where we are going.

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.

A good composer does not imitate he steals.

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.

Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.

A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.

I can remember the frustration of not being able to talk. I knew what I wanted to say, but I could not get the words out, so I would just scream.

What I try to do for my readers is to pass on some of the things that I found out about being thirteen after doing it for forty years.

In this watering-place I acted an heroic character, badly studied; and being a novice on such a stage, I forgot my part before a pair of lovely blue eyes.

Young people discovering their sexuality must know they walk with a strong tradition and that they are not alone. They have a right to information without being pressured.

Being a publicist is like management in a lot of ways - you're their friend, you're their mother, you're their confidante.

I mean, all alternative comedy is are comedians that have being doing it for so long, for so long, that they were relaxed enough to start becoming personal on stage.

I became hooked on the idea of being able to shoot an image and process it myself, and end up with a product.

Being a cover artist is not like being a real artist. That's just copying what someone else did.

It is too maddening. I've got to fly off, right now, to some devilish navy yard, three hours in a seasick steamer, and after being heartily sick, I'll have to speak three times, and then I'll be sick coming home. Still, who would not be sick for England?

I don't like being recognised, I have no interest in being famous at all, I just do what I do. If I could be like Captain Kirk and beam myself up and then beam myself down, I would!

I'm glad I'm not Brezhnev. Being the Russian leader in the Kremlin. You never know if someone's tape recording what you say.

Being a musician is what I do, but it's not what I am.

We're all like children. We may think we grow up, but to me, being grown up is death, stopping thinking, trying to find out things, going on learning.