A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

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

I don't choose what I compose. It chooses me.

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.

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.

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.

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