Gustav Mahler

If I weren’t the way I am, I shouldn’t write my symphonies.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

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.

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.

All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.

Discipline, work. Work, discipline.

It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.

It’s not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.

Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

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

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

I don’t let myself get carried away by my own ideas – I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.

Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one’s contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one’s way.

Destiny smiles upon me but without making me the least bit happier.

I beg of you… never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.

Spring won’t let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.

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.

An operetta is simply a small and gay opera.

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.

Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.

With the coming of spring, I am calm again.

It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

Even if people censure me, they should do so hat in hand.

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.

The impressions of the spriritual experiences gave my future life its form and content.

In the theatrical works we love and admire the most, the ending of the drama generally takes place offstage.

What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.

To judge a composer’s work, one must consider it as a whole.

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.

If you think you’re boring your audience, go slower not faster.

The spirit can assert itself only through the medium of clear form.

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.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.

When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.

There is a world of difference between a Mahler eighth note and a normal eighth note.