No statue has ever been put up to a critic.

For an instant God opens his door and His orchestra plays the Fifth Symphony.

Music is on a higher plane than everything else in this world.

No one ever erected a statue of a critic.

I often conduct an orchestra in my sleep; my orchestras are so huge that the back desks of the violas vanish into the horizon. And everything is so wonderful.

If I could express the same thing with words as with music, I would, of course, use a verbal expression. Music is something autonomous and much richer. Music begins where the possibilities of language end. That is why I write music.

Whereas most other modern composers are engaged in manufacturing cocktails of every hue and description, I offer the public cold spring water.