I fight against the void. I think I've written something acceptable, and then, when I look at it again, I find it execrable.
– Charles Gounod
Musical ideas sprang to my mind like a flight of butterflies, and all I had to do was to stretch out my hand to catch them.
– Charles Gounod
My humiliating profession of decomposer of music.
– Charles Gounod
This severe, ascetic music, calm and horizontal as the line of the ocean, monotonous by virtue of its serenity, anti-sensuous, and yet so intense in its contemplativeness that it verges sometimes on ecstasy.