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The violinist must possess the poet's gift of piercing the protective hide which grows on propagandists, stockbrokers and slave traders, to penetrate the deeper truth which lies within.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

I think a composer is always interested in his last work.

You write to become immortal, or because the piano happens to be open, or you've looked into a pair of beautiful eyes.

Grant that the true organ with which the beautiful is apprehended is the imagination, and it follows that all arts are likely to affect the feelings indirectly.

I just have to take my chances like any other composer.

Since the composer has said everything, if you discover everything, it will be enough and you will be a happy man. Don't try to say it's your taste, and because of that you are changing this or that. And I must say this respect is still there.

If the composer withholds more than we anticipate, we experience a delicious falling sensation; we feel we have been torn from a stable point on the musical ladder and thrust into the void.

If we were all determined to play the first violin we should never have an ensemble. therefore, respect every musician in his proper place.

Though the artist must remain master of his craft, the surface, at times raised to the highest pitch of loveliness, should transmit to the beholder the sensation which possessed the artist.