Do you think I give a damn about your and your pathetic violin?

Recommend to your children virtue; that alone can make them happy, not gold.

Music is the mediator between the spiritual and the sensual life. Although the spirit be not master of that which it creates through music, yet it is blessed in this creation, which, like every creation of art, is mightier than the artist.

Artists are fiery; they do not weep.

Richard Wagner commenting on the music of Ludvig Van Beethoven: He was a Titan, wrestling with the Gods.

You ask me where I get my ideas. That I cannot tell you with certainty. They come unsummoned, directly, indirectly - I could seize them with my hands - out in the open air, in the woods, while walking, in the silence of the nights, at dawn, excited by moods which are translated by the poet into words, by me into tones that sound and roar and storm about me till I have set them down in notes.

I would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet.