Spring won't let me stay in this house any longer! I must get out and breathe the air deeply again.
If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.
A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.
I am thrice homeless, as a native of Bohemia in Austria, as an Austrian among Germans, and as a Jew throughout the world. Everywhere an intruder, never welcomed.
All that is not perfect down to the smallest detail is doomed to perish.
I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.
If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.
It should be one's sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.
The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.
When I have reached a summit, I leave it with great reluctance, unless it is to reach for another, higher one.
I also had a brother who was like me a musician and a composer. A man of great talent, far more gifted than I. He died very young... he killed himself in the prime of his life.
Don't bother looking at the view - I have already composed it.
With the coming of spring, I am calm again.
The longer you live and the more you learn, the more clearly you will feel the difference between the few men who are truly great and the mere virtuosi.
In its beginnings, music was merely chamber music, meant to be listened to in a small space by a small audience.
It's not just a question of conquering a summit previously unknown, but of tracing, step by step, a new pathway to it.
Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift.
Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.
I don't let myself get carried away by my own ideas - I abandon 19 out of 20 of them every day.
Fortunately, something always remains to be harvested. So let us not be idle.
