I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.

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

It's one of nature's way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.

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

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

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.