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

You cannot imagine how it spoils one to have been a child prodigy.

I find little in the works of Beethoven, Berlioz, Wagner and others when they are led by a conductor who functions like a windmill.

I carry a deep sadness of the heart which must now and then break out in sound.

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

My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys, and all my sorrows lay.

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