I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous..

After the last notes of Gotterdammerung I felt as though I had been let out of prison..

What I have set down in a moment of ardour I must then critically examine. Sometimes I must do myself violence before I can mercilessly erase things ….

Music is an incomparably more powerful means and is a subtler language for expressing the thousand different moments of the soul's moods..

Music possesses much richer means of expression and it is a more subtle medium for translating the 1000 shifting moments of the feelings of the soul..

Mozart is the musical Christ..

What I need is to believe in myself again — for my faith has been greatly undermined; it seems to me my role is over..

I feel I shall live a long time..

Handel is only fourth rate. He's not even interesting..

We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without….