If I am not making music, I have no reason for existing.
I love music passionately. And because I love it I try to free it from barren traditions that stifle it.
[on Richard Wagner] A beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn.
The trouble with the opera is there's always to much singing.
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.
I wish to sing of my interior visions with the naive candour of a child.