Answer them critics with silence and indifference. It works better, I assure you, than anger and argument. . . .
Nothing primes inspiration more than necessity.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is the only musician who had as much knowledge asgenius, and as much genius as knowledge.
How wonderful opera would be if there were no singers.
Wagner has lovely moments but awful quarters of an hour.
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.