Musical ideas sprang to my mind like a flight of butterflies, and all I had to do was to stretch out my hand to catch them.

My humiliating profession of decomposer of music.

This severe, ascetic music, calm and horizontal as the line of the ocean, monotonous by virtue of its serenity, anti-sensuous, and yet so intense in its contemplativeness that it verges sometimes on ecstasy

Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own.

I fight against the void. I think I've written something acceptable, and then, when I look at it again, I find it execrable.

All the butterflies and cockyolybirds would fly past me.