My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.

I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.

An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.

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

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.