Richard Wagner, a musician who wrote music which is better than it sounds.

Imagination creates reality.

What Music expresses is eternal, infinite, and ideal; she expresses not the passion, love, desire, of this or that individual in this or that condition, but Passion, Love, Desire itself, and in such infinitely varied phases as lie in her unique possession and are foreign and unknown to any other tongue...So...Here's to Victory, gained by our higher sense over the worthlessness of the vulgar! To Love, which crowns our courage...To the day, to the night!...And three cheers for Music.

...music is the living God in our bosoms.

Joy is not in things; it is in us.

Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.

It is impossible to communicate with Schumann. The man is hopeless; he doesn't talk at all.