I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

In opera, there is always too much singing.

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

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.

The sound of the sea, the curve of a horizon, wind in leaves, the cry of a bird leave manifold impression in us. And suddenly, without our wishing it at all, one of these memories spills from us and finds expression in musical language...I want to sing my interior landscape with the simple artlessness of a child.

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

If we look at the works of JS Bach ... on each page we discover things which we thought were born only yesterday, from delightful arabesques to an overflowing of religious feeling greater than anything we have since discovered.