Igor Stravinsky
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?Collection: Love
Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Wisdom
I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.Collection: Truth
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.Collection: Relationship
What force is more potent than love?Collection: Love
Conductors' careers are made for the most part with 'Romantic' music. 'Classic' music eliminates the conductor; we do not remember him in it.Collection: Romantic
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.Collection: Respect
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.Collection: Music
My music is best understood by children and animals.Collection: Music
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.Collection: Music
Sins cannot be undone, only forgiven.Collection: Forgiveness
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.
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.
To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?
What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.
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 have been known to die from stares.
Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa-Lobos?
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.
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.
Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.
A good composer does not imitate; he steals.
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 ornament.
Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.
I am an inventor of music.
The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.
Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.
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 established service and for God.
Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.Collection: Art
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. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.Collection: Meaningful
There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.Collection: Pulse
Music must be listened to; it is not enough to hear it. A duck hears also.Collection: Ducks
My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.Collection: Thinking
Look for the music on all things, and life will be a symphony of joy. My music is best understood by children and animals.Collection: Children
Hurry? I have no time to hurry.Collection: Haste
One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.Collection: Music
I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.Collection: Pride
Vivaldi didn't write 400 concertos; he wrote one concerto 400 times.Collection: Writing
A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.Collection: Inspiration
Composition is selective improvisation.Collection: Improvisation
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 ornament.Collection: Church
Music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all. Music expresses itself.Collection: Music Is
A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.Collection: Claims
Mediocrity borrows, genius steals.Collection: Genius
My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.Collection: Childhood
Consonance, says the dictionary, is the combination of several tones into a harmonic unit. Dissonance results from the deranging of this harmony by the addition of tones foreign to it. One must admit that all this is not clear. Ever since it appeared in our vocabulary, the word 'dissonance' has carried with it a certain odor of sinfulness. Let us light our lantern: in textbook language, dissonance is an element of transition, a complex or interval of tones that is not complete in itself and that must be resolved to the ear's satisfaction into a perfect consonance.Collection: Vocabulary
Music's exclusive function is to structure the flow of time and keep order in it.Collection: Order
One's belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one's conviction that one is right. We all feel we are right; but we felt the same way twenty years ago and today we know we weren't always right.Collection: Years
The further one separates himself from the precepts of the Christian Church, the further one distances himself from the truth. Only God can create. I make music from music.Collection: Christian