Quotes

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?

My music is best understood by children and animals.

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

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music. They should be taught to love it instead.

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

[George] Gershwin is supposed to have come to me in Paris and to have asked me how much I would charge to give him lessons. I am then supposed to have asked how much he earned, and after he had supposedly said $100,000 a year, my supposed reply was, 'Then I should take lessons from you'. A nice story, but I heard it about myself from Ravel before I met Gershwin.

My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.

Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration. It is the Church's greatest ornament.

I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.

My music is cheap. It's my name that's expensive.