Arnold Schoenberg Quotes

You cannot expect the Form before the Idea,For they will come into being together.

Great art presupposes the alert mind of the educated listener

I have never seen faces, but because I have looked people in the eye, only their gazes.

Rests always sound well.

I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I don't know whether this is the cause why I did it in music and also why I did it in painting. Or vice versa: That I had this way as an outlet. I could renounce expressing something in words.

My work should be judged as it enters the ears and heads of listeners, not as it is described to the eyes of readers.

There are no more geniuses, only critics.

Although our "gentle air" cannot improve the way hate and envy look, it does seem not to encourage firmness and decision. All is compromise; caution and refinement are everywhere. Everything has to "make a good impression" - whether or not it is any good: the impression is the main thing.

My music is not modern, it is merely badly played

Music is only understood when one goes away singing it and only loved when one falls asleep with it in one's head, and finds it still there on waking up the next morning.

I was never revolutionary. The only revolutionary in our time was Strauss!

Composing is a slowed-down improvisation; often one cannot write fast enough to keep up with the stream of ideas.

I am the slave of an internal power more powerful than my education.