An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.

To continue in one path is to go backward.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

We have a duty towards music; namely to invent it. ...Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it. For the act of invention implies the necessity of a lucky find and of achieving realization of this find. What we imagine does not necessarily take on concrete form and may remain in a state of virtuality; whereas invention is not conceivable apart from its actually being worked out.

It's one of nature's way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.