Gustav Mahler

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

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

Born at Kaliste in Bohemia, the son of a Jewish peddler, Gustav Mahler described himself as: . . . three times homeless, a Bohemian in Austria, an Austrian among Germans and a Jew throughout the world, everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.