Igor Stravinsky

“Old age is a time of humiliations, the most disagreeable of which, for me, is that I cannot work long at sustained high pressure with no leaks in concentration.”

“Childhood - a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.”

“Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3.”

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

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

“Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly concious one, which alone insures vitality and durability...”

“I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an establi...”

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

“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.”

“Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.”

“The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.”

“Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.”

“The Church knew what the psalmist knew: 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 orna...”

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

“A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals...”

“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.”

“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.”

“Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.”

“A good composer does not imitate; he steals.”

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