I confess that I live only in my surroundings and in myself. I can conceive of no greater pleasure than sitting in my chair at this desk and looking at the walls around me day by day and night after night. In these pictures I do not see what you see; in the trees outside of my window I neither see nor hear what you do. I live in a world of my imagination, which is set in motion by something suggested by my intimate surroundings rather than by outside influences which distract me and give me nothing. I find an exquisite joy when i search deeply in the recesses of myself and if anything original is to come from me, it can only come that way.
Claude Debussy, in an interview with Harper Weekly, 1908
Richard Langham Smith, ed., (1977) Debussy on Music. New York: Knopf, p.232.
I live in a world of my imagination
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Old into new
An old thing becomes new if you detach it from what usually surrounds it. — Robert Bresson, French filmmaker J. Butler, Star Texts: Image and Performance in Film and Television, Detroit, Wayne State University Press, 1991, p. 170.
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