Igor Stravinsky

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.

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.

Money may kindle, but it cannot by itself, and for very long, burn.

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.

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.

Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being?

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.

What force is more potent than love?

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

Music is given to us with the sole purpose of establishing an order in things, including, and particularly, the coordination between man and time.