A Haydn symphony had a meaning for the social group that listened to it. A Mahler symphony had a meaning for the man who composed it. Here is the difference between the classical and romantic attitudes to art.

You don't say, 'I've done it!' You come, with a kind of horrible desperation, to realize that this will do.

Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.

When a man cannot chose, he ceases to be a man.

If he can only perform good or only perform evil, then he is a clockwork orange—meaning that he has the appearance of an organism lovely with colour and juice but is in fact only a clockwork toy to be wound up by God or the Devil.

I wrote much because I was paid little. I had no great desire to leave a literary name behind me.

It had been a wonderful evening and what I needed now, to give it the perfect ending, was a little of the Ludwig Van.