I loved your country [America] before I knew it.
When one is an artist, what else can he be?
I cannot imagine a genuinely happy home without music in it.
When I miss a week in practice, my audience knows it. When I miss a day, I know it.
The great familiar musical works are always greeted by the audiences as ever welcome and beloved friends.
It is not from choice that my life is music and nothing more, but when one is an artist what else can he be? When a whole lifetime is too short to attain the heights he wants to reach, how then can he devote any of the little time he has to things outside of his art?