"Art for art's sake has never flourished in England. We are often called inartistic because our art is unconscious. Our drama and poetry, like our laws and our constitution, have evolved by accident while we thought we were doing something else, and so it will be with music. The composer must not shut himself up and think about art, he must live with his fellows and make his art an expression of the whole life of the community – if we seek for art we shall not find it."

“The attitude of foreign to English musicians is unsympathetic, self-opinionated and pedantic. They believe that their tradition is the only one and that anything that is not in accordance with that tradition is "wrong" and arises from insular ignorance.”

“In the next world, I shan't be doing music, with all the striving and disappointments. I shall be being it.”

“The duty of the words is to say just as much as the music has left unsaid and no more.”

“Film composing is a splendid discipline, and I recommend a course of it to all composition teachers whose pupils are apt to be dawdling in their ideas, or whose every bar is sacred and must not be cut or altered.”

“The audience is requested not to refrain from talking during the overture. Otherwise they will know all the tunes before the opera begins.”

“Film contains potentialities for the combination of all the arts such as Wagner never dreamt of.”