A true personality . . . is like a robust organism that, with unconscious sureness, seeks out and digests the nourishment appropriate to it and vigorously rejects that which is unsuitable.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.

That which draws us by its mystical force; what every created thing, even the very stones, feels with absolute certainty as the center of its being... is the force of love. Christians call this "eternal blessedness." It is a necessity of man for growth and joy.

All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.

It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.

I was a crazy young man who let himself be blinded by his passions and obeyed only the impulses of the moment.