I deny that either singers or conductors can "create" or work creatively - this, as I have always said, is a conception that leads to the abyss.

Oh blessed a thousand times the peasant who is born, eats and dies without anybody bothering about his affairs.

Oh, you happy sons of the North who have been reared at the bosom of Bach, how I envy you!

It is better to invert reality than to copy it.

I adore art...when I am alone with my notes, my heart pounds and the tears stream from my eyes, and my emotion and my joys are too much to bear.

Our mistake, you see, was to write interminable large operas, which had to fill an entire evening. And now along comes someone with a one or two-act opera without all that pompous nonsense - that was a happy reform.

Of all composers, past and present, I am the least learned. I mean that in all seriousness, and by learning I do not mean knowledge of music.