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

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.

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.