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!

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

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

In opera, there is always too much singing.

The age of automobiles and aeroplanes cannot express itself in the same manner as did the age of the diligence.

Music is the space between the notes.

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