Silence is very important. The silence between the notes are as important as the notes themselves.

I never lie down at night without reflecting that, young as I am, I may not live to see another day.

It is when I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer.....that ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how they come, I know not, nor can I force them.

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

The most necessary, most difficult and principal thing in music, that is time.

Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once (gleich dies zusammen). What a delight this is I cannot tell ! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing lively dream.

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