When we play an unaccompanied Bach suite we may compare ourselves to an actor in Shakespeare's day, creating scenery which did not exist at all, through the power of declamation and suggestion. So in Bach. There is but one voice -- and many voices have to be suggested.

I see in the melody of Nature, God. It is a wonderful work of art. The spirit of the art is wonderful. And I feel that I am myself because I have never taken music lightly. Music is the manifestation of God, like everything else.

Of course, I continue to play and to practice. I think I would do so if I lived for another hundred years.

As long as one can admire and love, then one is young forever.

Man has made many machines, complex and cunning, but which of them indeed rivals the workings of his heart?

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.

Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted. I don't accept it.