There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth, an open-air art boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.

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

Music is the space between the notes.

If I am not making music, I have no reason for existing.

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.

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

Beauty seems to strike some people as a personal affront.