I live in the USSR, work actively and count naturally on the worker and peasant spectator. If I am not comprehensible to them I should be deported.

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.

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

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.

I want someone whose heart is big enough to hold me.

I am not forgotten, you know, no, I still receive a very great deal of fan

Tom . . . is Christ among us?' 'Yes.' Where? Why do I not see him? Why does he not come to me?' 'Because you did not love, ' Neville said, hating the fact that he had to say it.

Living with a conscience is like driving a car with the brakes on.

The experience you have making the movie is all you have; when the movie's finished, that's for other people. But while you're doing it, that's your time on the planet, so you want it to be good.

You should turn around at the end of the day and say I really like that piece of work, or that piece of work sucked. Not, was that popular or wasn't it popular?

Only the deepest love will persuade me into matrimony, which is why I shall end up an old maid.

People resent articulacy, as if articulacy were a form of vice.

Every man of action has a strong dose of egoism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be regarded as high qualities if he can make them the means to achieve great ends.

I don't use the techniques I learned at NYU much anymore.