Give me a laundry list and I'll set it to music.

How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.

The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart.

Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair.

Eating, loving, singing, and digesting are, in truth, the four acts of the comic opera known as life, and they pass like bubbles of a bottle of champagne. Whoever lets them break without having enjoyed them is a complete fool.

Every kind of music is good, except the boring kind.

Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.