If a composer could state in words what being a composer means, he would no longer need to be a composer.

composition is notation of distortion of what composers think they've heard before. Masterpieces are marvelous misquotations.

Artists, by definition innocent, don't steal. But they do borrow without giving back.

To start writing about your life is, from one standpoint, to stop living it. You must avoid adventures today so as to make time for registering those of yesterday.

Art means to dare - and to have been right.

Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable.

Compose first, worry later.