To write a symphony is, for me, to construct a world.

It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician's nature can hardly be expressed in words.

But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

I have become a different person. I don't know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

It is a funny thing, but when I am making music, all the answers I seek for in life seem to be there, in the music. Or rather, I should say, when I am making music, there are no questions and no need for answers.

The further the music develops, the more complex the apparatus used by the composer to express his thoughts becomes.

Behind me the branches of a wasted and sterile existence are cracking.