In music everything is prolonged, everything is edified, and when the enchantment has ceased, we are still bathed in its clarity; solitude is accompanied by a new hope between pity for ourselves - which makes us more indulgent and more understanding - and the certitude of finding something again, that which lives for ever in music.

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.

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

Great art likes chains. The greatest artists have created art within bounds. Or else they have created their own chains.

You should never listen to someone practice. That is their work and theirs alone.

Without discipline, there can be no freedom.

It is one thing to be gifted and quite another thing to be worthy of one's own gift.