I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

The profound meaning of music's essential aim... is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being

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

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.

Composers combine notes, that's all.