"The business of finding a nation's soul is a long and slow one at the best and a great many prophets must be slain in the course of it. Perhaps when we have slain enough prophets future generations will begin to build their tombs."

“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.”