Its a funny thing Alice, dying is just the way I composed it in Tod und Verklärung.

Must one become seventy years old to recognize that one's greatest strength lies in creating musical kitsch?

I want to be able to depict in music a glass of beer so accurately that every listener can tell whether it is a Pilsner or a Kulmbacher.

don't perspire while conducting - only the audience should get warm.

Ideas, like young wine, should be put in storage and taken up again only after they have been allowed to ferment and to ripen.

I may not be a first-rate composer, but I am a first-class second-rate composer.

The aria, after all, is the soul of opera.