I do not believe, as do so many musicians, that genius should be left to fight its way to the light. Genius is too rare, too precious, to be permitted to waste the best years of life--the years of youth and lofty dreams--in a heart-breaking struggle for bread. To starve the soul with the body is to do worse than murder. Think, too, of what the public loses!

I cannot imagine a genuinely happy home without music in it.

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

If I don't practise for one day, I know it; if I don't practise for two days, the critics knows it; if I don't practise for three days, the audience knows it.

Man is naturally lazy, therefore he invents labor-saving devices.

I am nothing! If you could know the dream of what I would like to be, you would realize how little I have accomplished.

Just as surely as every new language mastered opens up a new world, so knowledge of a Beethoven, a Chopin, or a Schumann opens up a new world in spiritual beauty and thought.