Gustav Mahler Quotes

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

“Both my marriages were failures! Number one departed, and number two stayed.”

“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.”

“It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.”

“Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.”

“What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.”

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

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