Quotes by Arnold Schoenberg

“Great art presupposes the alert mind of the educated listener”

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

“I never was very capable of expressing my feelings or emotions in words. I dont 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.”

“Whether one calls oneself conservative or revolutionary, whether one composers in a conventional or progressive manner, whether one tries to imitate old styles or is destined to express new ideas - one must be convinced of the infallibility of ones own fantasy and one must believe in ones own inspiration.”

“I owe very, very much to Mozart; and if one studies, for instance, the way in which I write for string quartet, then one cannot deny that I have learned this directly from Mozart. And I am proud of it!”

“At this time I was able to draw a circle which deviated very little from when you checked it with a compass. I could draw really very well, but I think I lost this capacity. But I had the idea that this sense of measurement, of measurements, is one of the capacities of a composer, of an artist. It is probably the basis of correct balance and logic within, if you have a strict feeling of the sizes and their mutual relationship.”

“I was a painter, perhaps, but I am not any longer a painter. I didnt paint for many, many years - but at least two or three decades.”

If it is art, it is not for all, and if it is for all, it is not art.

Rests always sound well.

Of course he seems to have quite a mind of his own and that is probably where he is weakest.