Art is the most beautiful deception of all!

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

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

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

The sound of the sea, the curve of a horizon, wind in leaves, the cry of a bird leave manifold impression in us. And suddenly, without our wishing it at all, one of these memories spills from us and finds expression in musical language…I want to sing my interior landscape with the simple artlessness of a child.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear.

Music is the space between the notes.

The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.

There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little – the book of Nature.

On those who overanalyze his music: When you tear the wings off a butterfly, it is no longer a butterfly

In opera, there is always too much singing.

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.

Some people wish above all to conform to the rules, I wish only to render what I can hear. There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law.

People come to music to seek oblivion: is that not also a form of deception?

Music is the silence between the notes.

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.

I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child.

Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

Life is the space between our things.

There is nothing more musical than a sunset.

To complete a work is just like being present at the death of someone you love.

Extreme complication is contrary to art.

A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

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