I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere.

England is a country of pianos, they are everywhere.

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!

My 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.

Play Mozart in memory of me - and I will hear you.

I am not fitted to give concerts. The audience intimidates me, I feel choked by its breath, paralyzed by its curious glances, struck dumb by all those strange faces.

Simplicity is the final achievement.