Igor Stravinsky

Good composers don't borrow, they steal

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de Kooning, who was asked to comment on a certain abstract painting, and answered in the negative. He was then told it was the work of a celebrated monkey. 'That's different. For a monkey, it's terrific'.

The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators.

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

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.