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My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

— Sergei Prokofiev Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

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Formalism is music that people don’t understand at first hearing.

This is my best work, but only because The Flaming Angel is my greatest.

In my view, the composer, just as the poet, the sculptor or the painter, is in duty bound to serve Man, the people. He must beautify human life and defend it. He must be a citizen first and foremost, so that his art might consciously extol human life and lead man to a radiant future. Such is the immutable code of art as I see it.

Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Sergei Prokofiev (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.