Music begins where words are powerless to express. Music is made for the inexpressible. I want music to seem to rise from the shadows and indeed sometimes to return to them.

There is nothing more musical than a sunset.

But music, don't you know, is a dream from which the veils have been lifted. It's not even the expression of a feeling, it's the feeling itself.

Music is the space between the notes.

Works of art make rules but rules do not make works of art.

Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.

[on Richard Wagner] A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

I am more and more convinced that music is not, in essence, a thing which can be cast into a traditional and fixed form. It is made up of colors and rhythms.

Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees. That can recount the whole history of mankind.

I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all!

...man's life must be a straight line of motion from goal to farther goal, each leading to the next and to a single growing sum, like a journey...

Nature: it might be the magical key to unlock a locked imagination.

There is no honour in betraying your friends.

My best works are for me. Not for the world.

I'm the kind of person who can hear that stuff. If you sing along to the radio and you're not going to sing unison with the melody, but find the harmony, I find that pretty easy to do.

Many will call me an adventurer - and that I am, only one of a different sort: one of those who risks his skin to prove his truths.

I can tell how far I ought to be going, I know how to get there, all I've got to do is keep playing.

Whether the poet is living or dead, they're part of our imaginative community.

No more words. In the name of this place we drink in with our breathing, stay quiet like a flower. So the nightbirds will start singing.

The law of diminishing returns is something I really believe in.