[On the music of Richard Strauss:] Too many notes!
You should never listen to someone practice. That is their work and theirs alone.
To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.
It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.
There is nothing boring in life except ourselves.
It is nothing to succeed if one has not taken great trouble, and it is nothing to fail if one has done the best one could.