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

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

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.

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

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.

We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.

My music is best understood by children and animals.