“No one feels another's grief, no one understands another's joy. People imagine that they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.”

“My compositions spring from my sorrows. Those that give the world the greatest delight were born of my deepest griefs.”

“I am in the world only for the purpose of composing.”

“Happy is the man who finds a true friend, and far happier is he who finds that true friend in his wife.”

“There is no such thing as happy music.”

“One of the first signs of the beginnings of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one will only in time come to hate.”

“One of the first signs of the beginning of understanding is the wish to die. This life appears unbearable, another unattainable. One is no longer ashamed of wanting to die; one asks to be moved from the old cell, which one hates, to a new one, which one willl only in time come to hate. In this there is also a residue of belief that during the move the master will chance to come along the corridor, look at the prisoner and say: "This man is not to be locked up again, He is to come with me.”