My great grandfather used to say to his wife, my great-grandmother, who in turn told her daughter, my grandmother, who repeated it to her daughter, my mother, who used to remind her daughter, my own sister, that to talk well and eloquently was a very great art, but that an equally great one was to know the right moment to stop.

You know that I become quite powerless whenever I am obliged to write for an instrument which I cannot bear.

The taste of death is upon my lips. I feel something that is not of this earth.

If people could see into my heart, I should almost feel ashamed - all there is cold, cold as ice.

Now there is music from which a man can learn something.

Melody is the essence of music.

The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.