The gift of imagination is by no means an exclusive property of the artist; it is a gift we all share; to some degree or other all of us, all of you, are endowed with the powers of fantasy.

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

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

I'm not interested in having an orchestra sound like itself. I want it to sound like the composer.

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.

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

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.