Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

The profound meaning of music's essential aim... is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being