The most difficult instrument to play in the orchestra is second fiddle.

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

It is hard to think of another composer who so perfectly marries form and passion.

Life without music is unthinkable. Life without music is academic. That is why my contact with music is a total embrace.

...we can all shut-up and go back to our caves.

Our most emotionally active life is lived in our dreams, and our cells renew themselves most industriously in sleep. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great; he is free from the experience of hostility; he is a poet, and most like an angel.

In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.