I'm not naive. I know perfectly well that there isn't a single Arab or Muslim in the world who would say: There has to be a Jewish state in the Middle East.

But the ear, let us not forget, starts operating on the forty-fifth day of the pregnancy of a woman. Seven and a half months advance over the eye...(but) what do we do in our society, in our civilisation, to continue this process?

Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.

The French Revolution gave us three... powerful ideas, or concepts - liberty, equality and fraternity. But these ideas... are not only right in themselves, but they are so because they come in the proper order. You cannot have equality without liberty, and you certainly cannot have fraternity without equality. The importance of this I learnt from music, because music evolves in time, and therefore the order inevitably determines the content.

To have real knowledge, one must understand the essence of things and not only their manifestations.

Wagner exploited all forms of expression at a composer's disposal - harmony, dynamics, orchestration - to the extreme. His music is highly emotional, and at the same time Wagner has extraordinary control over the effect he achieves.