A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance.

We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific'.