As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.

I want to do nothing chic, I want to have ideas before beginning a piece.

As a musician I tell you that if you were to suppress adultery, fanaticism, crime, evil, the supernatural, there would no longer be the means for writing one note.

Ah, music! What a beautiful art! But what a wretched profession!

I don't want to write a mass before being in a state to do it well, that is a Christian. I have therefore taken a singular course to reconcile my ideas with the exigencies of Academy rules. They ask me for something religious: very well, I shall do something religious, but of the pagan religion. . . . I have always read the ancient pagans with infinite pleasure, while in Christian writers I find only system, egoism, intolerance, and a complete lack of artistic taste.

Love is rebellious bird that nobody can tame, and it's all in vain to call it if it chooses to refuse.

I lived in Italy for three years and wanted no part of the country's disreputable way of life.