Endeavour to play easy pieces well and with elegance; that is better than to play difficult pieces badly.

Talent works, genius creates.

You should diligently play scales and fingerpractices. There are many, however, who believe they'll achieve all, by practicing daily on technique for hours on end, up till high age. It's like practicing every day to enumerate the alfabet faster and faster. One would think one could make better use of their valuable time.

You will be most readily cured of vanity or presumption by studying the history of music, and by hearing the master pieces which have been produced at different periods.

I was a God-fearing child, innocent and physically attractive.

It was an unforgettable picture to see Chopin sitting at the piano like a clairvoyant, lost in his dreams; to see how his vision communicated itself through his playing, and how, at the end of each piece, he had the sad habit of running one finger over the length of the plaintive keyboard, as though to tear himself forcibly away from his dream.

Without enthusiasm nothing great can be effected in art.