When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace.

You can't expect someone born into a family with no music...to understand when I'm conducting the Schönberg Variations.

I don't believe that the entire world is constantly anti-Semitic.

The Germans are prisoners of their past.

If a man dreams about sleeping with Marilyn Monroe, he's certainly entitled to that. But when he wakes up, he has to acknowledge that he is married to someone else.

I can't stand being in Chicago anymore and hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto in the elevator. Because that shows me that when they come to the concert hall they listen to it in the same way.

Every great work of art has two faces, one towards its own time and one towards future, towards eternity.