Composers combine notes, that's all.

Silence will save me from being wrong (and foolish), but it will also deprive me of the possibility of being right.

Silence, which will save from shame, will also deprive me of fame.

I was born out of due time in the sense that by temperament and talent I should have been more suited for the life of a small Bach, living in anonymity and composing regularly for an established service and for God.

An audience is an abstraction; it has no taste. It must depend on the only person who has (pardon, should have), the conductor.

Conformism is so hot on the heels of the mass-produced avant-garde that the 'ins' and the 'outs' change places with the speed of mach 3.

My freedom will be so much the greater and more meaningful the more narrowly I limit my field of action and the more I surround myself with obstacles. Whatever diminishes constraint diminishes strength. The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self of the chains that shackle the spirit.