“My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.”

The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.

The further one separates himself from the precepts of the Christian Church, the further one distances himself from the truth. Only God can create. I make music from music.

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one.

Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.

What force is more potent than love?

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.

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

Music is the coordination between man and time.

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.

We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

Art postulates communion, and the artist has an imperative need to make others share the joy which he experiences himself.

An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.

Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation.

To eat and drink without a friend is to devour like the lion and the wolf.

Poets are masters of us ordinary men, in knowledge of the mind because they drink at streams which we have not yet made accessible to science.

Don’t drink at all, don’t smoke, you must exercise and eat vegetables and fruit.

Drinking is an emotional thing. It joggles you out of the standardism of everyday life, out of everything being the same.

That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

I don’t even drink! I can’t stand the taste of alcohol. Every New Year’s Eve I try one drink and every time it makes me feel sick.

I set goals, take control, drink out my own bottle. I make mistakes but learn from every one.

Drinking your milk and talking at the same time may result in your having to be patted on the back and dried for quite a long time afterwords.