“Doomed to total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference, he inexorably kept on cutting out his diamonds, his dazzling diamonds, of whose mines he had a perfect knowledge.”

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.

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

The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation.

The performance has developed to such an extent in recent years that it challenges the music itself and will soon threaten it with relegation.

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one’s self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Composition is selective improvisation.

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

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.

All you have to do is close your eyes and wait for the symbols.

Look for the music on all things, and life will be a symphony of joy. My music is best understood by children and animals.

By what strange law of mind is it that an idea long overlooked, and trodden under foot as a useless stone, suddenly sparkles out in new light, as a discovered diamond?

No pressure, no diamonds.

Big girls need big diamonds.

Of two hearts one is always warm and one is always cold: the cold heart is more precious than diamonds: the warm heart has no value and is thrown away.

There are many sham diamonds in this life which pass for real, and vice versa.

Anybody is able to doubt me. I say, ‘Come with your criticism to polish the diamond of the truth.’ People need to wake up to their own power. Everybody has this nature.

But this is Miami, you can’t come to Miami and not show any skin. You gotta show something. If you’re all covered up in this heat, you’re gonna make me pass out out just to look at you. It’s sweaty in Miami – but the diamonds will keep me cool.

But this is Miami, you can’t come to Miami and not show any skin. You gotta show something. If you’re all covered up in this heat, you’re gonna make me pass out out just to look at you. It’s sweaty in Miami – but the diamonds will keep me cool.