The tea is ice-cold, the room grows colder and colder, but I grow warmer and warmer.

My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?

I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?

How often have I actually discovered in myself that enthusiasm raises the artist above himself, how in an ordinary mood one would not have been able to accomplish many of the things for which enthusiasm lends one everything, energy, fire.

Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.

I do not want horses or diamonds - I am happy in possessing you.

Treasures are no longer to be got by instrumental art.