What I have in my heart and soul - must find a way out. That's the reason for music.

Music is the electric soil in which the spirit thinks, lives and invents. All that's electrical stimulates the mind to flowing surging musical creation. I am electrical by nature.

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.

Art demands of us that we shall not stand still.

I alter some things, eliminate and try again until I am satisfied. Then begins the mental working out of this material in its breadth, its narrowness, its height and depth.

I carry my thoughts about me for a long time, often a very long time, before I write them down; meanwhile my memory is so faithful that I am sure never to forget, not even in years, a theme that has once occurred to me.

One must not hold one's self so divine as to be unwilling occasionally to make improvements in one's creations.