Composers aren't daring enough. They're afraid of that sacred idol called 'common sense', which is the most dreadful thing I know - after all, it's no more than a religion founded to excuse the ubiquity of imbeciles!

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.

There is nothing more musical than a sunset. He who feels what he sees will find no more beautiful example of development in all that book which, alas, musicians read but too little - the book of Nature.

First of all, ladies and gentlemen, you must forget that you are singers.

People don't very much like things that are beautiful - they are so far from their nasty little minds.

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

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 may happen.