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.

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

Music is in the space between the notes.

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

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

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

I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child.