"Once embarked on a course of sensationalism, the composer is forced into a descending spiral spin from which only the most experienced pilot can flatten out in time."

"The composer is now faced, not with further experiment but with the more difficult task of consolidating the experiments of this vertiginous period. He is like a man in a high-powered motor-car that has got out of control. He must either steer it away from the cliff's edge back to the road or leap out of it altogether. Most modern composers have chosen the latter plan, remarking, as they dexterously save their precious lives: "I think motor-cars are a little vieux jeu – don't you?""

"Music, from being an ordered succession of sounds, has become a matter of "sonorities", and anyone who can produce a brightly coloured brick of unusual shape is henceforth hailed as an architect."

"The whole trouble with a folk song is that once you have played it through there is nothing much you can do except play it over again and play it rather louder. Most Russian music, indeed, consists in ringing changes on this device, skilfully disguised though the fact may be."

"There is a definite limit to the length of time a composer can go on writing in one dance rhythm (this limit is obviously reached by Ravel towards the end of La Valse and towards the beginning of Bolero)."

"The Appalling Popularity of Music."

"It is only comparatively primitive machinery that affords a stimulus, and there is already a faint period touch about Pacific 231 and Le Pas d'Acier. One feels…that Prokofieff should have written ballets about the spinning jenny and the Luddite riots; that Honegger should have been there to celebrate the opening of the Stockton and Darlington Railway and the death of Huskisson with a "Symphonie Triomphale et Funèbre"."

"No composer has written as much as 100 bars of worthwhile music since 1925."

"Great music is that which penetrates the ear with facility and leaves the memory with difficulty. Magical music never leaves the memory."

"The musical equivalent of the towers of St Pancras Station"

"Asked if he had ever conducted any Stockhausen, he said, "No, but I once trod in some.""

"Too much counterpoint; what is worse, Protestant counterpoint."

"A musicologist is a man who can read music but can't hear it."

"The function of music is to release us from the tyranny of conscious thought."

"What can you do with it? It's like a lot of yaks jumping about.""

"I found it as alluring as a wayward woman and determined to tame it."

"The grand tune is the only thing in music that the great public really understands."

"If I cannot sing a work, I cannot conduct it."

"A city life for me!"

"I would like to have been present, if I could have my choice of all moments in music history, when Stokowski suddenly became conscious of his beautiful hands. That must have been a moment. Like stout Cortez [sic] on a peak in Darien (I know it was Balboa) he saw before him a limitless expanse, a whole uncharted sea that might be subjected to his influence, free from the encumbrance of a baton."

"His ambition to shine and his lack of a sound musical culture have led him often into distorted interpretations and into lapses of musical taste that have enraged musicians on three continents. ... His whole performance is a violation of musical tradition and taste the more surprising in that he has always managed to remain high in his profession notwithstanding."

"A painter paints his pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence. We provide the music, and you provide the silence."

"As a boy I remember how terribly real the statues of the saints would seem at 7 o'clock Mass-before I'd had breakfast. From that I learned always to conduct hungry."

"I believe that music can be an inspirational force in all our lives — that its eloquence and the depth of its meaning are all-important, and that all personal considerations concerning musicians and the public are relatively unimportant — that music come from the heart and returns to the heart — that music is spontaneous, impulsive expression — that its range is without limit — that music is forever growing — that music can be one element to help us build a new conception of life in which the madness and cruelty of wars will be replaced by a simple understanding of the brotherhood of man. Music can be all things to all men. It is like a great dynamic sun in the center of a solar system which sends out its rays and inspiration in every direction. … It is as if the heavens open and a divine voice calls. Something in our souls responds and understands. We are speaking here of the most inspired music."

"On matters of intonation and technicalities I am more than a martinet— I am a martinetissimo."

"I simply make music, and people have always been foolish enough to pay me for it. I never told them that I would have done it all for nothing. CBS TV 1976"

"It is my profound wish that this entire collection shall be devoted to the advancement of fine music for the continued enjoyment of music enthusiasts throughout the United States, be they students of the arts, performing artists, or members of that vast audience of music lovers among the American public."

"I understand you are doing "The Sorcerer's Apprentice." I would love to do that for you. I will do it for nothing."