False Notes Can Be Forgiven, False Music

It Is Easier To Analyze A Work In Its Form, In Its Evolution, Than Simply To Love It With All The Living Forces Of Our Heart. It Is Easier To Define Its Peculiarities And Its Details Than To Draw Out Of It Its Emotion, Its Thought.

Words Created Divergencies Between Beings, Because Their Precise Meanings Put An Opinion Around The Idea. Music Only Retains The Highest And Purest Substance Of The Idea, Since It Has The Privilege Of Expressing All, Whilst Excluding Nothing.

[on Being Asked How It Felt To Be The First Female Conductor Of The Boston Symphony:] I've Been A Woman For A Little More Than Fifty Years, And I've Gotten Over My Original Astonishment.

The Essential Conditions Of Everything You Do Must Be Choice, Love, Passion.

The History Of Harmony Is The History Of The Development Of The Human Ear, Which Has Gradually Assimilated, In Their Natural Order, The Successive Intervals Of The Harmonic Series.