On those who overanalyze his music: When you tear the wings off a butterfly, it is no longer a butterfly

The trouble with the opera is there's always to much singing.

But music, don't you know, is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself.

He was the incomparable painter of mystery, silence, and the infinite, of the passing cloud, and the sunlit shimmer of the waves-subleties which none before him had been capable of suggesting.

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.

Anyone who calls my music "impressionist" is an imbecile.