Tradition is tending the flame, not worshiping the ashes.

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.

... you can't start with a democracy. You have to work up through stuff like tyranny and monarchy first. That way people are so relived when they get to democracy that they hang on to it.

— How do you make your pictures? — I don’t know, it’s not important.

Time is nature's way of keeping everything from happening at once.

I hate cynicism - it's my least favorite quality and it doesn't lead anywhere.

Your inner being already knows. It's trying to communicate with you. But it needs to shift you into a different state of mind.

By my estimation, dating was 1 percent confidence and 99 percent troubleshooting.

I enter my studio at 9 a.m. I have lunch here, I return right away to my work and I go out to dinner at 8 p.m. My daily tasks vary very much.

It's nice to have options even if you can't take them.

It is easier to grow in dignity than to make a start.

When I go to the movies, I do like to see things that surprise me, a little bit, in ways that seem truthful to the world that we live in.