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.

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

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

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.

People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?

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!

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