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

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

The human voice is the most beautiful instrument of all, but the most difficult to play.

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 shall never be converted, and I shall remain true to my old religion of the classics until my life's end.

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

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

If you think that the brass is not blowing loud enough, mute it by a couple of degrees.

Never look at the trombones, you'll just encourage them.

Never look at the brass - it only encourages them.

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

Etchings endure, But not in SandMeanings Collide To Unresolved FragmentsCodes fizzle to StaticThey are not lostBut UnheardNever lostFading slowly to SilenceBy infinite degrees

Choose a wife rather by your ear than your eye.

I think I was born with the impression that what happened in books was much more reasonable, and interesting, and real, in some ways, than what happened in life.

Success has ruin'd many a man.

Catharsis returns us to the purpose for which were originally intended - to be called by God to do good - and thus ultimately returns us to ourselves.

There's no excuse therefore, for a 1,152 page book. I think we should all be using 300-page paperbacks. These exist.

I was in Sweden for 10 days. They put me on the front page of the daily papers eight days in a row. I did nothing to warrant any of the attention. It was ridiculous!

it is only to the extent that we are willing to expose ourselves again and again to annihilation that we are able to find that part of ourselves that is indestructible.

If Trump really can build up American infrastructure, that will help reinflate the world economy, and that would be a good thing.

I've been outspent by my opponents every time I've run for U.S. Senate.