Time is the best of critics; and patience the best of teachers.

Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here.

To be a great composer requires immense experience... One acquires this by listening not only to other men's work, but above all to one's own!

I wish I could throw off the thoughts which poison my happiness, but I take a kind of pleasure in indulging them.

As long as I have health and strength, I will gladly work all my days.