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

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.

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

You work on something for so long that you become numb to it. Like, you don’t even know how to listen to it because you listened to it so many times.

Great acting is about listening to what they are saying not waiting to deliver your lines.

I don’t like guys who don’t listen.

Radio, which was a much better medium than television will ever be, was easy and pleasant to listen to. Your mind filled automatically with images.

Two people in a conversation amount to four people talking. The four are what one person says, what he really wanted to say, what his listener heard, and what he thought he heard.

I don’t hate old men but listen when being spoken to.

Let’s go slow dancing around the kitchen, listening to the sound of dawn by the back roads and let our shadows paint the walls.

I’m all about telling stories. I like people to picture the music video in their head when they’re just listening to the song.