Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public cold spring water.

For me, music begins where words end.

I often conduct an orchestra in my sleep; my orchestras are so huge that the back desks of the violas vanish into the horizon. And everything is so wonderful.

Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public cold spring water.

If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.

Music is on a higher plane than everything else in this world.

No statue has ever been put up to a critic.