“I love music which, for all its beauty and perfection, implies, as in Bluebeard's castle, some unreal door, a ‘black hole’, the receptacle of chaos and grief. Sometimes the less it is apparent the better, but nonetheless its presence is imperative. Undoubtedly, a true artist would not cultivate deliberately the breath of the abyss in his creative work, being more inclined to build bridges and safe roads between wittingly incompatible categories; he is engaged in a perpetual search for harmony and the supreme message, but the greater his personality the more difficult for him to attain the desired goal.
One has to be a Dostoevsky to feel wholeheartedly that it is possible to elevate oneself while falling too deep and low, and vice versa. And one has to be a Bach to erect, amid wild and dangerous nature, a kingdom of harmony without transforming the forest into a park and without the taming of the roaring beasts.”
“I’ve noticed that the best things in my music often turned out to be those preconceived and even heard by my inner ear at the moments when I was in a ‘semi-conscious’ state, when in my mind’s eye, with the unbelievable visual clarity, there emerged some fantastic figures, plots and lines of sound, arising one after another in a transformed shape. All this happened when feeling intellectually calm and cheerful in general, I was suddenly overpowered with inward trembling and yearning, like a fit of fever arising from the wind blowing on a bright day...
Of course, for such moments not to slip away as a shapeless and fruitless experience, it is desirable to equip one’s subconscious with some preliminary drafts and designs…”