I am the slave of an internal power more powerful than my education.

The principal function of form is to advance our understanding. It is the organization of a piece which helps the listener to keep the idea in mind, to follow its development, its growth, its elaboration, its fate.

Great art must proceed to precision and brevity. It presupposes the alert mind of an educated listener who, in a singleact of thinking, includes with every concept all associations pertaining to the complex.

I find above all that the expression, atonal music, is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying the art of not falling, or swimming the art of not drowning.

If music is frozen architecture, then the potpourri is frozen coffee-table gossip... Potpourri is the art of adding apples to pears.

I am the slave of an internal power more powerful than my education.

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.