"There a feeling of recognition, as of meeting an old friend, which comes to us all in the face of great artistic experiences. I had the same experience when I first heard an English folksong, when I first saw Michelangelo's Day and Night, when I suddenly came upon Stonehenge or had my first sight of New York City – the intuition that I had been there already."

“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.”