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.

Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars.

Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning.

England is so surrounded by the boredom of conventionalities, that it is all one to them whether music is good or bad, since they have to hear it from morning till night. For here they have flower-shows with music, dinners with music, sales with music.

Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?

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.

The Official Bulletin declared that the Poles should be as proud of me as the Germans are of Mozart; obvious nonsense.