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

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.

Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.

There comes a time when things can work out and everybody can be happy. And that’s what it’s all about in the end – everybody being happy and working it out.

A soldier plods and groans, sweats and toils, he growls and curses, and at the end he dies.

Everyone who wants to do good to the human race always ends in universal bullying.

The cumulative effects of the economic and financial sanctions might well bring the rebellion to an end within a matter of weeks rather than months.

The sexuality doesn’t end. It really doesn’t. You’re sexual your whole life, if you’re a sexual person.

It takes two people to make you, and one people to die. That’s how the world is going to end.

A recipe is a story that ends with a good meal.

I ended up doubling the math time that a conventional school would have. But I don’t think any of these things were path-breaking or unusual.