“I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.”

The profound meaning of music’s essential aim, is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being.

I never understood the need for a “live” audience. My music, because of its extreme quietude, would be happiest with a dead one.

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.

Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.

Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious one, which alone insures vitality and durability.

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.

Artistic vision comes from a mind clear enough to fall in love with what we see.

Artistic vision is having the clarity to fall in love with what you see.

To be ‘intellectual’ or ‘artistic’ or, in their own word, to be ‘highbrow,’ is to be priggish and of dubious virtue.

We recommend for the training of teachers not only a considerable artistic education in general but special attention to the art of reading.

Any artist should be grateful for a naive grace which puts him beyond the need to reason elaborately.

There can be no ‘graduated exercises in drawing’ leading up to an artistic creation. That goal can be attained only through the development of mechanical technique and through the freedom of the spirit.

Woodstock had a tremendous impact on American artistic life.

Very few people possess true artistic ability. It is therefore both unseemly and unproductive to irritate the situation by making an effort.