"My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles."

"One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles."

"I am not a musician. I am a composer."

"I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one."

"I was attacked for being a pasticheur, chided for composing “simple” music, blamed for deserting “modernism,” accused of renouncing my “true Russian heritage.” People who had never heard of, or cared …"