It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.
Frederic ChopinTo 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!
Frederic ChopinLiszt 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.
Frederic ChopinMy 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.
Frederic ChopinI am gay on the outside, especially among my own folk (I count Poles my own); but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams - or sleeplessness - melancholy, indifference - desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death; some kind of sweet peace, some kind of numbness, absent-mindedness.
Frederic Chopin