Music is only understood when one goes away singing it and only loved when one falls asleep with it in one's head, and finds it still there on waking up the next morning.

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

There is still plenty of good music to be written in C major.

I have never seen faces, but because I have looked people in the eye, only their gazes.

Great art must proceed to precision and brevity. It presupposes the alert mind of an educated listener who, in a singleact of thinking, includes with every concept all associations pertaining to the complex.

I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it!