The best way to hold on to something is to pay no attention to it. The things you love too much perish. You have to treat everything with irony, especially the things you hold dear. There's more of a chance then that they'll survive.

In the long run, any words about music are less important than the music.

Every piece of music is a form of personal expression for its creator...If a work doesnt express the composers own personal point of view, his own ideas, then it doesnt, in my opinion, even deserve to be born.

Music is a means capable of expressing dark dramatism and pure rapture, suffering and ecstasy, fiery and cold fury, melancholy and wild merriment – and the subtlest nuances and interplay of these feelings which words are powerless to express and which are unattainable in painting and sculpture.

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed.

A great piece of music is beautiful regardless of how it is performed. Any prelude or fugue of Bach can be played at any tempo, with or without rhythmic nuances, and it will still be great music. That's how music should be written, so that no-one, no matter how philistine, can ruin it.

Our business is rejoicing, our business is rejoicing.