One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to achieve certain unlimited dexterity. A well formed technique, it seems to me, can control and vary a beautiful sound quality.

Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning.

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

A strange adventure befell me while I was playing my Sonata in B flat minor before some English friends. I had played the Allegro and the Scherzo more or less correctly. I was about to attack the March when suddenly I saw arising from the body of my piano those cursed creatures which had appeared to me one lugubrious night at the Chartreuse. I had to leave for one instant to pull myself together after which I continued without saying anything.

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.

Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties.

They want me to give another concert but I have no desire to do so. You cannot imagine what a torture the three days before a public appearance are to me.