I deny that either singers or conductors can "create" or work creatively – this, as I have always said, is a conception that leads to the abyss. - Giuseppe Verdi

To copy the truth can be a good thing, but to invent the truth is better, much better.

Let us turn to the past: that will be progress.

I wish that every young man when he begins to write music would not concern himself with being a melodist, a harmonist, a realist, an idealist or a futurist or any other such devilish pedantic things. Melody and harmony should be simply tools in the hands of the artist, with which he creates music; and if a day comes when people stop talking about the German school, the Italian school, the past, the future, etc., etc., then art will perhaps come into its own.