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

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

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

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.

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

On conducting: If you can just barely hear the French horns on stage, the balance is perfect.

He'd be better off shoveling snow.