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

I am the slave of an internal power more powerful than my education.

My music is not modern, it is merely badly played

I find above all that the expression, atonal music, is most unfortunate — it is on a par with calling flying the art of not falling, or swimming the art of not drowning.

The principal function of form is to advance our understanding. It is the organization of a piece which helps the listener to keep the idea in mind, to follow its development, its growth, its elaboration, its fate.

In Spring! In the creation of art it must be as it is in Spring!

I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words.