When I miss a week in practice, my audience knows it. When I miss a day, I know it.

A man is not necessarily a master because he happened to compose two or three centuries ago. Let us beware of the worship of mere antiquity.

True originality has its foundations in the soul, not in the mind, and when there is an effort to create something different it is usually a failure. Beethoven or Schumann or Chopin did not try to be original. They were original.

Beginnings play their prized part in every finished human accomplishment, for beginnings mean the birth of added progress.

America, the country of my heart, my second home.

Is there anything more true than human pain? Is there anything more sincere than the cry for help from those who suffer? Only a great wave of mankind's pity can surmount an immense wave of human misery?

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.