Without order there can be no inner satisfaction. Without inner satisfaction there can be no freedom. Without freedom there is no joy.

As far as the execution is concerned ... the most frequent and most serious mistake is to follow the music instead of preceding it.

A great work is made out of a combination of obedience and liberty.

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.

Do nothing for effect. Do it for truth.

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.

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: it has broadened the limits of our sorrowful life, it has lit up the sweetness of our hours of happiness by effacing the pettinesses that diminish us, bringing us back pure and new to what was, what will be, what music has created for us.