Igor Stravinsky

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?

— Igor Stravinsky

The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be…

— Igor Stravinsky

I remember being handed a score composed by Mozart at the age of eleven. What could I say? I felt like de…

— Igor Stravinsky

We can neither put back the clock nor slow down our forward speed, and as we are already flying pilotless, on instrument…

— Igor Stravinsky

It is the transcendent (or 'abstract' or 'self-contained') nature of music that the new so called concretism--Pop Art, eighteen-hour slices-of-reality films, musique…

— Igor Stravinsky

Composition is frozen improvisation.

— Igor Stravinsky

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

— Igor Stravinsky

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

— Igor Stravinsky

Music is the sole domain in which man realizes the present.

— Igor Stravinsky

One's belief that one is sincere is not so dangerous as one's conviction that one is right. We all feel we are…

— Igor Stravinsky

A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.

— Igor Stravinsky

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

— Igor Stravinsky

Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning.

— Igor Stravinsky

My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone and everything connected with it to hell.

— Igor Stravinsky

Look for the music on all things, and life will be a symphony of joy. My music is best understood by children…

— Igor Stravinsky

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

— Igor Stravinsky

I am an inventor of music.

— Igor Stravinsky

We cannot describe sound, but we cannot forget it either.

— Igor Stravinsky

Music is given to us specifically to make order of things, to move from an anarchic, individualistic state to a regulated, perfectly…

— Igor Stravinsky

The true creator may be recognized by his ability always to find about him, in the commonest and humblest thing, items worthy…

— Igor Stravinsky

There is music wherever there is rhythm, as there is life wherever there beats a pulse.

— Igor Stravinsky

What gives the artist real prestige is his imitators....

— Igor Stravinsky

Lesser artists borrow, great artists steal.

— Igor Stravinsky

I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over…

— Igor Stravinsky

The one true comment on a piece of music is another piece of music.

— Igor Stravinsky