Inspiration is a guest that does not willingly visit the lazy.
Truly there would be reason to go mad were it not for music.
Madam, you ask me how I compose. I compose sitting down.
How can one express the indefinable sensations that one experiences while writing an instrumental composition that has no definite subject? It is a purely lyrical process. It is a musical confession of the soul, which unburdens itself through sounds just as a lyric poet expresses himself through poetry...As the poet Heine said, 'Where words leave off, music begins.'
I sit down to the piano regularly at nine-o'clock in the morning and Mesdames les Muses have learned to be on time for that rendezvous.
When Brahms is in extra good spirits, he sings, "The grave is my joy".
