You ask if I would have been different without 'Party guidance'? Yes, almost certainly. No doubt the line I was pursuing when I wrote the Fourth Symphony would have been stronger and sharper in my work. I would have displayed more brilliance, used more sarcasm, I could have revealed my ideas openly instead of having to resort to camouflage.

The real geniuses know where their writing has to be good and where they can get away with some mediocrity.

What do you think of Puccini? [ Britten: 'I think his operas are dreadful.' ] No, Ben, you are wrong. He wrote marvellous operas, but dreadful music.

Real music is always revolutionary, for it cements the ranks of the people; it arouses them and leads them onward.

We had a dim premonition that power-mad gangsters would one day use art itself as a way of deadening men's minds.

I wouldn't let anybody influence me into thinking I was doing the wrong thing by singing about death, hell and drugs. Because I've always done that, and I alwa…

For it is a mad world and it will get madder if we allow the minorities, be they dwarf or giant, orangutan or dolphin, nuclear-head or water-conversationalist,…