Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote.

What concerns me, is the general social tendency to enforce a level, above which nothing rises and stands out.

The future? Like unwritten books and unborn children, you don't talk about it.

But, on the other hand, if Schubert were alive today, he would find even richer fields to plow.

But the thing that will always occupy me the most is music.

Toward the end of his life, one can sense that he was no longer thinking his way into the minds of others, causing them to speak on his behalf, but that he was now speaking for himself.

And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.