It is easier to achieve a desired result in short pieces.

It should be one's sole endeavor to see everything afresh and create it anew.

It is always the same with me; only when I experience something do I compose, and only when composing do I experience! After all, a musician’s nature can hardly be expressed in words.

Only when I experience do I compose – only when I compose do I experience.

Never let oneself be guided by the opinion of one’s contemporaries. Continue steadfastly on one’s way.

If I weren’t the way I am, I shouldn’t write my symphonies.

But it’s peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

I have become a different person. I don’t know whether this person is better, he certainly is not happier.

Don’t bother to look, I’ve composed all this already.

My time will come, that is: after the finish of the recurring song cycles.