I hate you, Richard Wagner . . . but I hate you on my knees.

Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.

Children must receive music instruction as naturally as food, with as much pleasure as they derive from a ball game, and this must happen from the beginning of their lives.

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

The second fiddle. I can get plenty of first violinists, but to find someone who can play the second fiddle with enthusiasm

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.

A work of art does not answer questions, it provokes them; and its essential meaning is in the tension between the contradictory answers.