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.

I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere.

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

My manuscripts sleep, while I cannot, for I am covered with poultices.

Liszt commenting on the music of Frédéric Chopin: He confided . . . those inexpressible sorrows to which the pious give vent in their communication with their Maker. What they never say except upon their knees, he said in his palpitating compositions.

My piano has not yet arrived. How did you send it? By Marseilles or by Perpignan? I dream music but I cannot make any because here there are not any pianos . . . in this respect this is a savage country.

It's a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or hair curling, as pale as ever, in a cell with such doors as Paris never had for gates. The cell is the shape of a tall coffin, with an enormous dusty vaulting, a small window... Bach, my scrawls and waste paper - silence - you could scream - there would still be silence. Indeed, I write to you from a strange place.