The end of the First World War had thrown Germany's youth into great turmoil. The reins of power had fallen from the hands of a deeply disillusioned older generation, and the younger ones drew together in larger and smaller groups to blaze new paths or, at least, to discover a new star to steer by.

If the lecture is good, then everything is too smooth. That's the same in music: if the performance is too good, you really don't enjoy it, because it just goes by, and you can never penetrate into the heart of it. Sometimes a poor performance is better for enjoyment, because you can look at those things that were wrong and analyze them.

This proving of such and such I found to be almost like cheating. You start somewhere, and then you go into a dark tunnel, and then you come out at another place. You find that you have proved what you wanted to prove, but in the tunnel, you don't see anything.

There is a great difference between discoveries and inventions. With discoveries, one can always be skeptical, and many surprises can take place. In the case of inventions, surprises can really only occur for people who have not had anything to do with it.