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.

It may be a good thing to copy reality; but to invent reality is much, much better.

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.

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.

I have striven for perfection, it has always eluded me, but I surely had an obligation to make one more try.

The artist must yield himself to his own inspiraton, and if he has a true talent, no one knows and feels better than he what suits him.