Einstein said that "the most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious." So why do so many of us try to explain the beauty of music, thus depriving it of its mystery?

What [Louis Armstrong] does is real, and true, and honest, and simple, and even noble. Every time this man puts his trumpet to his lips, even if only to practice three notes, he does it with his whole soul.

When the study of the arts leads to the adoration of the formula (heaven forbid), we shall be lost.

When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

This will be our reply to violence: to make music more intensely, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.

From New Year's on the outlook brightens; good humor lost in a mood of failure returns. I resolve to stop complaining.

Success is all very well as long as you don't inhale.