What I wanted and what I visualized while composing has not always been realized.

I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas; I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

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

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

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.

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