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.

For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being.

Let us not forget that the greatest composers were also the greatest thieves. They stole from everyone and everywhere.

Resist doing things that have no meaning for life.

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

To retire is the beginning of death.

The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.