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.

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

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.

I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.

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

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.