Don't play the notes. Play the meaning of the notes.

To be a musician is a great privilege but it is also a very great responsibility. One must think that to be a musician is a gift - a gift from Nature. There is no great merit in us except in loving this gift with respect and devotion and doing everything possible to honor that gift by work and more work. We must work with conviction and humility, searching for beauty, simplicity, and the Truth. And it is for us musicians to do all in our power for a better world. Music must carry the message of beauty, of love and of peace.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

Don’t be vain because you happen to have talent. You are not responsible for that; it was not of your doing. What you do with your talent is what matters.

Don't play the notes. Play the meaning of the notes.

The miracle of Bach has not appeared in any other art. To strip human nature until its divine attributes are made clear, to inform ordinary activities with spiritual fervour, to give wings of eternity to that which is most ephemeral; to make divine things human and human things divine; such is Bach, the greatest and purest moment in music of all time.

The art of not playing in tempo--one has to learn it. And the art of not playing what is written on the printed paper.