Music is the space between the notes.

Music begins where words are powerless to express. Music is made for the inexpressible. I want music to seem to rise from the shadows and indeed sometimes to return to them.

Composers aren't daring enough. They're afraid of that sacred idol called 'common sense', which is the most dreadful thing I know - after all, it's no more than a religion founded to excuse the ubiquity of imbeciles!

Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.

The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams.

[on Richard Wagner] A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

In opera, there is always too much singing.