Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayed

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.

The harsh reality is that my flesh must die not so much because of what it does, but because of what it is.

There is always somebody about to ruin your day, if not your life.

When a man has lost all happiness he's not alive. Call him a breathing corpse.

My wife's jealousy is getting ridiculous. The other day she looked at my calendar and wanted to know who May was.

Let's make a statement to the airlines just to get their attention. We'll pick a week next year and we'll all agree not to go anywhere for seven days.

I am not finding pregnancy much of a joy. I am afraid of childbirth, but I am afraid I can't find a way of avoiding it.

I think the thing we must look for actually is a growth in our people and in whoever comes in a quality of courage to tell our people just what world conditions are.

How you measure the performance of your managers directly affects the way they act.

It is indeed a radical act of love just to sit down and be quiet for a time by yourself.

I have never been against new art as such; some of it is good, much is crap, most is somewhere in between.