Everything we know by heart enriches us and helps us find ourselves. If it should get in the way of finding ourselves, it is because we have no personality.

Nothing is better than music; when it takes us out of time, it has done more for us than we have the right to hope for.

Never forget that your days are blessed. You may know how to profit by them, or you may not, but they are blesses.

The great conductor is always a despot by temperament and intractable in his ways. ... The artist is obliged to keep his laughter and tears to himself. If they want to emerge, in spite of himself, then he must hide them or unleash them in someone else.

[On the music of Richard Strauss:] Too many notes!

Art is not emotion. Art is the medium in which emotion is expressed.

Music was not invented by the composer, but found.