Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I am an inventor of music.
Hurry? I have no time to hurry.
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.
Revolution means turning the wheel.
What force is more potent than love?
Composers combine notes, that's all.
Composition is frozen improvisation.
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.
Composition is selective improvisation.
Good composers don't borrow, they steal
To continue in one path is to go backward.
An artist is like a pig snouting truffles.
I never am sea sick, never. I am sea drunk!
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
Music is...the coordination between man and time.
We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.
My music is best understood by children and animals.
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.
The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one
We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.
Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.
All you have to do is close your eyes and wait for the symbols.
Silence, which will save from shame, will also deprive me of fame.
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.
The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is.
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.
Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times.
Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.
To be deprived of art and left alone with philosophy is to be close to Hell.
Nothing is likely about masterpieces, least of all whether there will be any.
A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.
Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?
The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.
There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?
My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.
Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.
One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.
All music is nothing more than a succession of impulses that converge towards a definite point of repose.