122 Quotes by Igor Stravinsky

To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

Composers combine notes, that's all.

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street anymore without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares

A plague on eminence! I hardly dare cross the street any more without a convoy, and I am stared at wherever I go like an idiot member of a royal family or an animal in a zoo; and zoo animals have been known to die from stares.

My music is best understood by children and animals.

The principle of the endless melody is the perpetual becoming of a music that never had any reason for starting, any more than it has any reason for ending.

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.

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

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.