Inspiration and ideas only come to me when I have not had a woman in a very long time... Ballads, polonaises, even a whole concerto may have been lost forever up your des durka, I can't tell you how many. I have been so deeply engulfed in my love for you I have hardly created anything.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees. That can recount the whole history of mankind.

Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.

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

Beauty seems to strike some people as a personal affront.

How much has to be explored and discarded before reaching the naked flesh of feeling.