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

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!

Put all your soul into it, play the way you feel!

Time is the best of critics; and patience the best of teachers.

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!

We fell silent and all joking ceased. We gazed mutely into each other's eyes and an intense longing for the fullest avowal of the truth forced us to a confession, requiring no words whatever, or the incommensurable misfortune that weighed upon us. With tears and sobs we sealed a vow to belong to each other alone.

I haven't heard anything so great for a long time; Beethoven snaps his fingers at the whole world.