Piano playing is more difficult than statesmanship. It is harder to awake emotions in ivory keys than it is in human beings.

I am inclined to believe that some music, like certain poetry, finds its appeal and way to all.

Art is great only when it bears the stamp of the individual.

Music expresses first of all sadness rather than joy.

The genius is the man who has genuine and deep human relations with others, who does not cut himself off in the search for originality, but who realizes the value of artistic tradition.

Change follows change in us, almost without transition; we pass from blissful rapture to sobbing woe; a single step divides our sublimest ecstasies from the darkest depth of spiritual despondency.

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?