“Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody’s piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.”

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.

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