“All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.”

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.

The performance has developed to such an extent in recent years that it challenges the music itself and will soon threaten it with relegation.

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Composition is selective improvisation.

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.

I’m definitely guilty of thinking something is funny but thinking the audience won’t. Then three years later I will finally try it and it’ll kill them. I got to give them more credit.

There is definitely an addiction to money that I have.

You can’t change your fingerprints. You have only ten of them. And you leave them on everything you touch; they are definitely not a secret.

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

The definitive freedom-sustaining and life-enhancing principles of democracy in living action.

I’ve had the same core group of friends that I’ve always had. We’re surfing, so that definitely keeps you grounded.

We always feel threatened by things we don’t know. But, there are definitely some weird things going on.

Start with something simple and small, then expand over time. If people call it a ‘toy’ you’re definitely onto something.