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

Real men are sadly lacking in this world, for when they are put to the test they prove worthless.

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

My mind and fingers have worked like the damned. Homer, the Bible, Plato, Locke, Lamartine, Chateaubriand, Beethoven, Bach, Hummel, Mozart, Weber are all around me. I study them. I devour them with fury.

The supreme harmony of the cosmos is selected in the harmony of the spirit.

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.

Mournful and yet grand is the destiny of the artist.