To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also. (Igor Stravinsky)
In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love? (Igor Stravinsky)
I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge. (Igor Stravinsky)
Is it not by love alone that we succeed in penetrating to the very essence of being? (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 of execution. (Igor Stravinsky)
My music is best understood by children and animals. (Igor Stravinsky)
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.' (Igor Stravinsky)
Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end. (Igor Stravinsky)
Just as appetite comes by eating, so work brings inspiration, if inspiration is not discernible at the beginning. (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)
Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading. (Igor Stravinsky)
My childhood was a period of waiting for the moment when I could send everyone connected to it to hell. (Igor Stravinsky)
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. (Igor Stravinsky)
I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it. (Igor Stravinsky)