Many, many composers have only found their way to a certain form, through familiarizing themselves with texts.

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

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

Particularly at around the age of 70 you reach a stage where you have to be very careful. If, at that point, you abandon the work you have been doing, there is a good chance that you will just collapse and drift.

Some critics have written that I wanted to teach through singing. Not at all. I was learning I went to school every time I gave a song recital.

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.

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.