It is my fervent wish and my greatest ambition to leave a work with a few useful instructions for the pianists after me.

For the virtuoso, musical works are in fact nothing but tragic and moving materializations of his emotions; he is called upon to make them speak, weep, sing and sigh, to recreate them in accordance with his own consciousness. In this way he, like the composer, is a creator, for he must have within himself those passions that he wishes to bring so intensely to life.

Companions, in misery and worse, that is what we all are, and to try to change this substantially avails us nothing.

Life is only a long and bitter suicide, and faith alone can transform this suicide into a sacrifice.

In life one must decide whether to conjugate the verb to have or the verb to be.

So let us not worry, and look instead as it has been taught us to do, as the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, keeping complete faith in Our Father's goodness.

A good Cuban cigar closes the doors to the vulgarities of the world.