A creative artist works on his next composition because he was not satisfied with his previous one.

When a man is in despair, it means that he still believes in something.

Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.

If they cut off both hands, I will compose music anyway holding the pen in my teeth.

I write music, it’s performed. After all, my music says it all. It doesn’t need historical and hysterical commentaries. In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

What you have in your head, put down on paper. The head is a fragile vessel.

I feel eternal pain for those who were killed by Hitler, but I feel no less pain for those killed on Stalin's orders. I suffer for everyone who was tortured, shot, or starved to death.

It's about the people, who have stopped believing because the cup of evil has run over.

The most uninteresting part of the biography of a composer is his childhood. All those preludes are the same and the reader hurries on to the fugue.

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.

Some people love me for being odd, and some want to kill me for the same reason

It's pretty dangerous if you approach music trying to please other people.

All is well, tho' faith and form Be sunder'd in the night of fear.

Culture is a slingshot moved by the force of its past

Few people know anything of the English history but what they learn from Shakespear; for our story is rather a tissue of personal adventures and catastrophes than a series of political events.

This will not be a campaign of half measures, and we will accept no outcome except victory.

The ability to choose cannot be taken away or even given away-it can only be forgotten.

Cats never feel threatened. They are genetically incapable of accepting that anyone could possibly dislike anything as perfect as a cat.

The only tyrannies from which men, women and children are suffering in real life are the tyrannies of minorities.