Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for: it has broadened the limits of our sorrowful life, it has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the pettinesses that diminish us, bringing us back pure and new to what was, what will be, what music has created for us.

Life is denied by lack of attention, whether it be to cleaning windows or trying to write a masterpiece.

Without discipline, there can be no freedom.

The history of harmony is the history of the development of the human ear, which has gradually assimilated, in their natural order, the successive intervals of the harmonic series.

It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.

The essential conditions of everything you do must be choice, love, passion.

False notes can be forgiven, false music cannot.