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

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

I am an inventor of music.

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.

Somehow, we have to realize that what we watch and what we listen to not only often reflects our most violent tendencies but cultivates more violence.

Well, I think part of my gift, or if I have one, is that I love listening.

My grandparents don’t really listen to pop music, and they only speak Spanish and only listen to Spanish music.

I listened to a lot of Jay-Z and Kanye coming up, which would be unexpected for a boy bander like me. But I’d listen to a lot of that, and a lot of Ed Sheeran, actually.

A song is a song. But there are some songs, ah, some songs are the greatest. The Beatles song Yesterday. Listen to the lyrics.

I should never go with rumors because they’re often not correct.

I can listen to all different sorts of music. I don’t really care about The Next Big Thing.

Had I listened to my agent, I’d be running around in tights, climbing buildings and stuff.