I live like a Hottentot. I cannot exchange one sensible word with anyone.

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.

Every time you hurt my heart, you are actually making it stronger than before.

Love is so many things, but it is not safe.

How impotent my anger was, a surge with no place to land, and how familiar that was: my feelings strangled inside me, like little half-formed children, bitter and bristling.

you cannot wait for the change. You have to be the change".

You can't convince anyone of anything. You can only give them the right information, so that they convince themselves.

My aesthetic is that of the sniper on the roof.

Some virtues are only seen in affliction and others only in prosperity.

There are still times I feel unhappy and I must smile, and there are times I want to cry and I must laugh... people rarely see the real Marvin Gaye

You need people who score goals. That's how you win games

I have always been independent. I like it that way. When someone forces me to do something, I don't do it.