“What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.”

I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!

To continue in one path is to go backward.

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

Hurry? I have no time to hurry.

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.

An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.

Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.

I wonder if memory is true, and I know that it cannot be, but that one lives by memory nevertheless and not by truth.

Good composers don’t borrow, they steal.

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.

The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is.

It’s one of nature’s way that we often feel closer to distant generations than to the generation immediately preceding us.

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.

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.