The time is past when music was written for a handful of aesthetes. Today vast crowds of people have come face to face with serious music and are waiting with eager impatience. Composers, take heed of this…But this does not mean that you must pander to this audience. Pandering always has an element of insincerity about it and nothing good ever came of that.

Page 106; from a notebook entry (1937). - Sergei Prokofiev: Autobiography, Articles, Reminiscences (1960)