The more controlled, limited and tormented art is, the freer it is.

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.

We have a duty towards music, namely, to invent it.

Hurry? I have no time to hurry.

The Church knew what the psalmist knew: Music praises God. Music is well or better able to praise him than the building of the church and all its decoration; it is the Church's greatest ornament.

I live neither in the past nor in the future. I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve, and I serve it in all lucidity.

An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.