Don't bother to look, I've composed all this already.
- Gustav Mahler, to Bruno Walter, who had stopped to admire mountain scenery in rural Austria.



I would rather play "Chiquita Banana" and have my swimming pool than play Bach and starve.
- Xavier Cugat



(Musicians) talk of nothing but money and jobs. Give me businessmen every time. They really are interested in music and art. - Jean Sibelius, explaining why he rarely invited musicians to his home.



The amount of money one needs is terrifying...
- Ludwig van Beethoven



Only become a musician if there is absolutely no other way you can make a living.
- Kirke Mecham, on his life as a composer



I am not handsome, but when women hear me play,
they come crawling to my feet.
- Niccolo Paganini



Flint must be an extremely wealthy town:
I see that each of you bought two or three seats.
- Victor Borge, playing to a half-filled house in Flint, Mich.



If one hears bad music it is one's duty to drown it by one's conversation.
- Oscar Wilde



Life can't be all bad when for 10 dollars you can buy all the
Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for 10 years.
- William F. Buckley Jr.



You can't possibly hear the last movement of Beethoven's Seventh and go slow.
- Oscar Levant, explaining his way out of a speeding ticket



Wagner's music is better than it sounds.
- Mark Twain



There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major.
- Serge Prokofiev



I never use a score when conducting my orchestra.
Does a lion tamer enter a cage with a book on how to tame a lion?
- Dimitri Mitropoulos



God tells me how the music should sound,
but you stand in the way.
- Arturo Toscanini to a trumpet player



Already too loud!
- Bruno Walter at his first rehearsal with an American orchestra,
on seeing the players reaching for their instruments.



I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris,
or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere.
- Frederic Chopin



When she started to play, Steinway himself came down
personally and rubbed his name off the piano.
- Bob Hope, on comedienne Phyllis Diller



Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.
- Richard Strauss



In opera, there is always too much singing.
- Claude Debussy



Oh how wonderful, really wonderful,
opera would be if there were no singers!
- Gioacchino Rossini



Movie music is noise.
It's even more painful than my sciatica.
- Sir Thomas Beecham

Thanks To Donny aka guyfromchicago,
For Sending Me These Great Quotes

Please leave a Music Quote in the DreamBook, if you have one.
If not just leave a note. Thanks

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