To judge a composer's work, one must consider it as a whole.

I beg of you... never assume an inner or an outer pose, never a disguise.

It should be one’s sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.

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.

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

I hope you will no longer accuse me of a lack of delicacy. as I now count on your understanding.

I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.