We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.

Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

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

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.

A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.

Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times.