Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.

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

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

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'.

Good composers don't borrow, they steal

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

I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!