A true personality . . . is like a robust organism that, with unconscious sureness, seeks out and digests the nourishment appropriate to it and vigorously rejects that which is unsuitable.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.

But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.