Why hurry over beautiful things? Why not linger and enjoy them?

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

Why hurry over beautiful things? Why not linger and enjoy them?

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.

My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.

I wish to lead a life free from care, and I see that I shall be unhappy if I cannot always work at my art.

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.