Who can do anything after Beethoven?

Nobody understands another's sorrow, and nobody another's joy.

No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.

I am composing like a god, as if it simply had to be done as it has been done.

Above all things, I must not get angry. If I do get angry I knock all the teeth out of the mouth of the poor wretch who has angered me.

There are two contrary impulses which govern this man's brain-the one sane, and the other eccentric. They alternate at regular intervals.

No one really understands the grief or joy of another. We always imagine that we are approaching some other, but our lines of travel are actually parallel.