The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.

It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.

Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.

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.

Tradition is laziness.

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