To be interested solely in technique would be a very superficial thing to me.

It's a moment that I'm after, a fleeting moment, but not a frozen moment.

I think you have to use your eyes as well as your emotion, and one without the other just doesn't work

I surrender to the world of my imagination, reenacting all those wonderful tales my father would read aloud to me. I became a very active reader, especially history and Shakespeare.

Don't overdo it, don't underdo it. Do it just on the line.

I love to study the many things that grow below the corn stalks and bring them back to the studio to study the color. If one could only catch that true color of nature - the very thought of it drives me mad.

I have a good friend, Rudolf Serkin, the pianist, a very sensitive man. I was talking to him one day backstage after a concert and I told him that I thought he had played particularly sensitively that day. I said, "You know, many pianists are brilliant, they strike the keys so well, but somehow you are different." "Ah," he said, "I don't think you should ever strike a key. You should pull the keys with your fingers."