Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in ones birthplace.

I don't know where there can be so many pianists as in Paris, so many asses and so many virtuosi.

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.

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.

The earth is suffocating... Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive.

Having nothing to do, I am correcting the Paris edition of Bach; not only the engraver's mistakes, but also the mistakes hallowed by those who are supposed to understand Bach (I have no pretensions to understand better, but I do think that sometimes I can guess).