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

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

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?

When I discovered that I had been made custodian of this gift, in my earliest childhood, I pledged myself to God to be worthy of it, but I have received uncovenanted mercies all my life. The custodian has too often kept faith on his all-too-worldly terms.

Music is...the coordination between man and time.

I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.