Tradition is tending the flame, not worshiping the ashes.
It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
I am thrice homeless, as a bohemian, as an Austrian, and all over the world, you guessed it right I am Jewish.
Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.
The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.
Discipline, work. Work, discipline.
Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayed.
To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.
My time will come, that is: after the finish of the recurring song cycles.
It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.
The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.
Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.
The real art of conducting consists in transitions.
I don’t let myself get carried away by my own ideas; I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.
In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.
Tradition is laziness.
Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.
Life’s been nothing but paperwork.
I have become a different person. I don’t know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.