Igor Stravinsky — "The more an artist tries to be original, the more he is likely to succeed."

"For I consider that music is, by its very nature, essentially powerless to express anything at all, whether a feeling, an attitude of mind, a psychological mood, a phenomenon of nature, etc. Expressio…"

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

"I am not a theorist. I am a practitioner."

"My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell."

"I don't believe in an afterlife, so I don't have to spend my whole life fearing hell, or fearing heaven even more. For whatever the tortures of hell, I think the boredom of heaven would be even worse."