The maestro on creativity:
“When I am ..... completely myself, entirely alone... or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence and how these ideas come I know not nor can I force them.”
“Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.”
“It is a mistake to think that the practice of my art has become easy to me. I assure you, dear friend, no one has given so much care to the study of composition as I. There is scarcely a famous master in music whose works I have not frequently and diligently studied.”
“To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop.”
“The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.”
“All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember it.”
“I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.”
“I never lie down at night without reflecting that—young as I am—I may not live to see another day.”
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"A world that has produced a Mozart is a world worth saving."—Franz Schubert
