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

Good composers don't borrow, they steal

The performance of performance has developed to such an extent in recent years that it challenges the music itself and will soon threaten it with relegation.

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street any more without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.

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

I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.

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