“The best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There’s more of a chance then that they’ll survive.”

I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.

It’s about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.

He fell like a chicken into the soup.

Those who have ears to hear, will hear.

In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.

Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.

I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin’s orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.

Every piece of music is a form of personal expression for its creator. If a work doesn’t express the composers own personal point of view, his own ideas, then it doesn’t, in my opinion, even deserve to be born.

I always try to make myself as widely understood as possible; and if I don’t succeed, I consider it my own fault.

A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one.

I don’t know what will become of this piece. Our brave critics will no doubt charge me with imitating Ravel’s Bolero. Too bad – this is how I hear war.

What can be considered human emotions? Surely not only lyricism, sadness, tragedy? Doesn’t laughter also have a claim to that lofty title? I want to fight for the legitimate right of laughter in “serious” music.

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.

The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.

Music is good, not evil. Poetry is good, not evil. Primitive, but oh, so true!

The best part of touring, still, is touching people’s hearts and igniting my band and igniting the people into what you call a spiritual revelation is sound and emotion.

If I fall over and make mistakes, I’ll pick myself back up and hope for the best and try to conduct myself with as much authenticity and moral code.

Actually I’m writing as best I can, in order to keep the momentum and the career there, but I want to live.

The best thing to do is find one person in your life and try to love them unconditionally. If you’ve accomplished that, you’ve accomplished a lot.

On set I keep myself to myself; I’d rather the director speak up. I’m not gonna direct a younger actor. I think the power of example works best, actually.

The aim of life is no more to control the mind, but to develop it harmoniously; not to achieve salvation here after, but to make the best use of it here below

I want to sell out arenas and make an album and work with some of the best artists in the world.

No matter what I do I’m still not the best writer for you.