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.

Art without technique is invertebrate, shapeless, characterless.

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.

Every new generation in its hour of dawn, filled with the dreams of youth, its thirsts, intoxications and enthusiasms, thinks itself called upon to impel humanity towards heights unmeasured, believes itself an appointed pathfinder, a thinker of thoughts, a doer of deeds greater than any of those which came before. Every new generation desires beauty, but a beauty all its own.

There have been a few moments when I have known complete satisfaction, but only a few. I have rarely been free from the disturbing realization that my playing might have been better.

I established a certain standard of behavior, that, during my playing, there must be no talking.

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!