Now there is no taboo; everything is allowed. But one cannot simply go back to tonality, it’s not the way. We must find a way of neither going back nor continuing the avant-garde. I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.

I don't use old music.

I write bars, for the musicians, because they have to be together.

People often thought Leopold Auer was Russian because he lived in St. Petersburg so long, almost fifty years.

I know already the music I will write. But the words? I have not yet decided.

I think a composer is always interested in his last work.

Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully