Gustav Mahler
The real art of conducting consists in transitions.Collection: Art
With the coming of spring, I am calm again.Collection: Nature
In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.Collection: Music
Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Failure
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.Collection: Music
I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.
A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.
If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.
The call of love sounds very hollow among these immobile rocks.
It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.
Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.
I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.
There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.
I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone.
You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.
Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.
What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.
If I weren't the way I am, I shouldn't write my symphonies.
It should be one's sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.
Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.
Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.
The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form.
I beg of you... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.
Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.
To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.
Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.
I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.
When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage.
Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one's contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one's way.
Discipline, work. Work, discipline.
It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.
The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.
I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas - I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.
I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.
An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.
The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.
It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.
Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.Collection: Fire
What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.Collection: Musical
It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.Collection: Music
To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.Collection: Writing
Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayedCollection: Failure
I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.Collection: Choose Me