Brahms stayed an extra day to hear my [Fifth] Symphony and was very kind ... I like his honesty and open-mindedness. Neither he nor the players liked the finale, which I also think rather horrible.

Music is an incomparably more powerful means and is a subtler language for expressing the thousand different moments of the soul's moods.

Madam, you ask me how I compose. I compose sitting down.

Even in the works of the greatest master, the organic sequence can fail and then a skillful join must be made.

A self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood.

I have put my whole soul into this work [The Pathetique Symphony] . . . You cannot imagine what joy I feel at the thought that my days are not yet over and that I may still accomplish much.

If that condition of mind and soul, which we call inspiration, lasted long without intermission, no artist could survive it. The strings would break and the instrument be shattered into fragments.