They're classic themes, which is why I think it's such a great story to look at again. The concept of being loyal to your friends, to the point where you'd even die for them, is a great subject.
I ask my destiny - what power is this That cruelly drives me onward without rest? My destiny says, "Look round!" I turn back and see It is I myself that is ever pushing me from behind.
In Bach there is still too much crude Christianity, crude Germanism, crude scholasticism; he stands on the threshold of European (modern) music, but he looks back from there to the Middle Ages.
Let a man learn to look for the permanent in the mutable and fleeting; let him learn to bear the disappearance of things he was wont to reverence; without losing his reverence; let him learn that he is here, not to work, but to be worked upon; and that, though abyss open under abyss, and opinion displace opinion, all are at last contained in the Eternal Cause.
I have never been insecure, ever, about how I look, about what I want to do with myself. My mum told me to only ever do things for myself, not for others.