It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.

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.

This is the music business. 'Five years is five hundred years' - your words.

Before we begin to investigate that, let us try to realize what we do know, so as to make the most of it, and to separate the essential from the accidental.

Believe in something, and let that something be yourself.

And the geography of the thing--the geography of them--was completely and hopelessly wrong.

Like all Americans, I will never forget where I was the morning of the 9/11 attacks.

When he hit it, I knew that it was my ball. But I had to catch it and it seemed like the hardest catch of my life. I said to myself, 'Two hands, just like your dad taught you.'

Sometimes I think I’m the last remaining person who goes to the shows for the pleasure of seeing the clothes, rather than desperately wanting to be there for the social side

Some things are so unexpected that no one is prepared for them.

Ive never had to fight hard for anything Ive gotten in the past.

See what you can do. See what you want to do. See what you will do about it. Find your way out.