Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times.

Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

I was...attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing "simple" music, blamed for deserting "modernism," accused of renouncing my "true Russian heritage." People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried "sacrilege": "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone." To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect," but I love.