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

Revolution means turning the wheel.

The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy of note.

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.

What I cannot follow are the manic-depressive fluctuations from total control to no control, from the serialization of all elements to chance.

It is my conviction that the public always shows itself more honest in its spontaneity than do those who officially set themselves up as judges of works of art.

We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed, and as we are already flying pilotless, on instrument controls, it is even too late to ask where we are going.

Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.

To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell.

Silence, which will save from shame, will also deprive me of fame.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

I had another dream the other day about music critics. They were small and rodent-like with padlocked ears, as if they had stepped out of a painting by Goya.

Nothing is likely about masterpieces, least of all whether there will be any.

I haven’t understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

It makes passable Bath buns. But inspiration from within is like a volcano: It changes the face of the world.

The bible is not a blueprint for every day of your life, it is an inspiration not a blueprint.

If you remember nothing else, remember this: Inspiration from outside one’s self is like the heat in an oven.

Inspiration is not inside of us. Inspiration comes from outside. It comes from our spiritual guides and from different energies that are in the universe.

Beauty and inspiration can be found in any natural place of the earth.

If you have time to breathe you have time to meditate.

Peace is the most valuable commodity. And it’s free!

There’s an important difference and distinction between the objective medical fact of my being an amputee and the subjective societal opinion of whether or not I’m disabled.