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.

I have a horror of sentimentality, and I cannot forget that its name is Saint-Saëns.

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!

Art is the most beautiful deception of all! And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

People don't very much like things that are beautiful - they are so far from their nasty little minds.

Peter Townsend Music is the silence between the notes.. So could it be said that dance is the stillness between the steps?

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.