It always makes me sad when I think of how I saw Wagner wasting his vitality, not only by singing their parts to some of his artists, but acting out the smallest details, and of how few they were who were responsive to his wishes.

Wagner manages to convey emotion with music better than anyone, before or since.

Is Wagner a human being at all? Is he not rather a disease? He contaminates everything he touches - he has made music sick.

"The satyr, as the Dionysiac chorist, dwells in a reality sanctioned by myth and ritual. That tragedy should begin with him, that the Dionysiac wisdom of tragedy should speak through him, is as puzzling a phenomenon as, more generally, the origin of tragedy from the chorus. Perhaps we can gain a starting point for this inquiry by claiming that the satyr, that fictive nature sprite, stands to cultured man in the same relation as Dionysian music does to civilization. Richard Wagner has said of the latter that it is absorbed by music as lamplight by daylight. In the same manner, I believe, the cultured Greek felt himself absorbed into the satyr chorus, and in the next development of Greek tragedy state and society, in fact everything that separates man from man, gave way before an overwhelming sense of unity that led back into the heart of nature. This metaphysical solace (which, I wish to say at once, all true tragedy sends us away) that, despite every phenomenal change, life is at bottom indestructibly joyful and powerful, was expressed most concretely in the chorus of satyrs, nature beings who dwell behind all civilization and preserve their identity through every change of generations and historical movement.

I just can't listen to any more Wagner, you know...I'm starting to get the urge to conquer Poland.

It always makes me sad when I think of how I saw Wagner wasting his vitality not only by singing their parts to some of his artists but acting out the smallest details and of how few they were who were responsive to his wishes.

Please write music like Wagner only louder.

I love Wagner but the music I prefer is that of a cat hung up by its tail outside a window and trying to stick to the panes of glass with its claws.