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

Silence, which will save from shame, will also deprive me of fame.

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street any more without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.

The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

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.

I never understood the need for a "live" audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.