The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

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.

I was...attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing "simple" music, blamed for deserting "modernism," accused of renouncing my "true Russian heritage." People who had never heard of, or cared about, the originals cried "sacrilege": "The classics are ours. Leave the classics alone." To them all my answer was and is the same: You "respect," but I love.

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

I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.

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