“People think me a sort of Florence Nightingale, but I have no heroic qualities. I simply don’t feel very much.”

“I've been diagnosed as being bi-polar but so have Florence Nightingale and King David...which kinda leaves me in pretty dam good company...if I must say so.”

“There's good in all of us and I think I simply love people too much, so much that it makes me feel too fucking sad.”

“… there’s one thing that I know well – that I feel very alone. It’s the price you have to pay if you want to be yourself. And don’t believe that I don’t suffer for it, but it seems to me that I have nothing to say to the majority of people and it’s perhaps that which makes me feel timid… I'm very demonstrative when I play. I always make faces, laugh, jump about, gesticulate, and am very animated, and many people who see me like that think that I’m much more reserved when I’ve left my piano. In reality, I feel truly at ease only in music…Keith Jarrett”

“I think honesty is the most heroic quality one can aspire to.”

“You have the most revolting Florence Nightingale complex,' said Mrs. Smiling.It is not that at all, and well you know it. On the whole, I dislike my fellow beings; I find them so difficult to understand. But I have a tidy mind and untidy lives irritate me. Also, they are uncivilized.”