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

I've been a woman for a little over 50 years and have gotten over my initial astonishment. As for conducting an orchestra, that's a job where I don't think sex plays much part.

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

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.

Music was not invented by the composer, but found.

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

The history of harmony is the history of the development of the human ear, which has gradually assimilated, in their natural order, the successive intervals of the harmonic series.