I sometimes ponder on variation form and it seems to me it ought to be more restrained, purer.

For the shallow delights of matrimony and opera I have no courage.

It is not hard to compose but it is wonderfully hard to let the superfluous notes fall under the table. . . So many melodies fly about, one must be careful not to tread on them.

A symphony is no joke.

We cling nervously to the melody, but we don't handle it freely, we don't really make anything new out of it, we merely overload it.

In him converge all previous streams of tendency, not as into a pool, stagnant, passive, motionless, but as a noble river that received its tributary waters and bearss them onward in larger and statelier volume.

Study Bach. There you will find everything.