Art is the most beautiful deception of all. And although people try to incorporate the everyday events of life in it, we must hope that it will remain a deception lest it become a utilitarian thing, sad as a factory.

— Claude Debussy

Art is the most beautiful of all lies.

— Claude Debussy

Beauty must appeal to the senses, must provide us with immediate enjoyment, must impress us or insinuate itself into us without any effort on our part.

— Claude Debussy

Extreme complication is contrary to art.

— Claude Debussy

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

— Claude Debussy

Music is the expression of the movement of the waters, the play of curves described by changing breezes.

— Claude Debussy

Music is the silence between the notes.

— Claude Debussy

The attraction of the virtuoso for the public is very like that of the circus for the crowd. There is always the hope that something dangerous will happen.

— Claude Debussy

The century of airplanes has a right to its own music.

— Claude Debussy

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 traditions that stifle it. It is a free art gushing forth — an open-air art, boundless as the elements, the wind, the sky, the sea. It must never be shut in and become an academic art.

— Claude Debussy