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!

Yesterday's concert was a success. I hasten to let you know. I inform your Lordship that I was not a bit nervous and played as I play when I am alone. It went well... and I had to come back and bow four times.

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

If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!

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

I tell my piano the things I used to tell you

Even in winter it shall be green in my heart.