Gustav Mahler Quotes

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

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

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.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.

We all return. It is this certainty that gives meaning to life and it does not make the slightest difference whether or not in a later incarnation we remember the former life. What counts is not the individual and his comfort, but the great aspiration to the perfect and the pure which goes on in each incarnation.

I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.

I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone.

God can only be comprehended as Love.

Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.