Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.

I pay no attention whatever to anybody's praise or blame. I simply follow my own feelings.

When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone, and of good cheer - say traveling in a carriage, or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep - it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best, and most abundantly. Whence and how they 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.

To talk well and eloquently is a very great art, but that an equally great one is to know the right moment to stop.

Melody is the essence of music. I compare a good melodist to a fine racer, and counterpoints to hack post-horses.

The whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it, like a fine picture or a beautiful statue, at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once.