"There are only twelve tones. You must treat them carefully."
 
"Tonality is a natural force, like gravity."
 
"The reactions music evokes are not feelings, but they are the images, memories of feelings."
 
"People who make music together cannot be enemies, at least while the music lasts."
 
"Music, as long as it exists, will always take its departure from the major triad and return to it. The musician cannot escape it any more than the painter his primary colors or the architect his three dimensions."
 
"Music, as we practice it, is, in spite of its trend toward abstraction, a form of communication between the author and the consumer of his music"