I know perfectly well that no musician can make his thoughts or his talents different to what Heaven has made them; but I also know that if Heaven had given him good ones, he must also be able to develop them properly.

Pray to God that He might create is us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us.

This is what I think art is and what I demand of it: that it pull everyone in, that it show one person another's most intimate thoughts and feelings, that it throw open the window of the soul.

It's not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise.

Such a divine profession is art! When everything else looks so stale and disgustingly vacuous, so enthralls even the littlest real effort of art our innermost and carries us from town, from country, from earth, as that it must be truely a blessing of the Gods.

I know perfectly well that no musician can make his thoughts or his talents different to what Heaven has made them; but I also know that if Heaven had given him good ones, he must also be able to develop them properly.

Never mind, put any book on the piano, and someone can turn from time to time, so I need not look as though I played by heart.