Igor Stravinsky, 1882-1971, Russian Composer Quotes

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.

There is no force more potent than love.

Commemoration of Johann Sebastian Bach, musician, 1750 The Church knew what the Psalmist knew: music praises God. Music is as well, or better, able to praise Him than the building of a church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

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.' - London Magazine, March, 1967.

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.

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles. , quoted in Andriessen and Schoenberger, The Apollonian Clockwork (). Oxford: Oxford University Press.

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.

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

The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.