There is no theory. You have only to listen. Pleasure is the law. I love music passionately. And because l love it, I try to free it from barren trad… - Claude Debussy

I love music passionately. And because I love it, I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.

Music would take over at the point at which words become powerless, with the one and only object of expressing that which nothing but music could express. For this, I need a text by a poet who, resorting to discreet suggestion rather than full statement, will enable me to graft my dream upon his dream — who will give me plain human beings in a setting belonging to no particular period or country. … Then I do not wish my music to drown the words, nor to delay the course of the action. I want no purely musical developments which are not called for inevitably by the text. In opera there is always too much singing. Music should be as swift and mobile as the words themselves.

Music is the space between the notes.

Listen to no one's advice except that of the wind in the trees. That can recount the whole history of mankind...