Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

The mere fact of knowing that a great audience waits on your labor is enough to shake all your nerves to pieces.

Is there anything more true than human pain? Is there anything more sincere than the cry for help from those who suffer? Only a great wave of mankind's pity can surmount an immense wave of human misery?

The ultimate necessity is the summoning of the mind and will to do their duty.

The culture of any country is gauged first by its progress in art.

I do not believe, as do so many musicians, that genius should be left to fight its way to the light. Genius is too rare, too precious, to be permitted to waste the best years of life--the years of youth and lofty dreams--in a heart-breaking struggle for bread. To starve the soul with the body is to do worse than murder. Think, too, of what the public loses!

Music is the only art that actually lives.