“If one plays good music, people don't listen, and if one plays bad music people don't talk.”

“I like Wagner's music better than anybody's. It is so loud that one can talk the whole time without other people hearing what one says.”

“If one hears bad music, it is one's duty to drown it in conversation.”

“I don't play accurately--any one can play accurately--but I play with wonderful expression. As far as the piano is concerned, sentiment is my forte. I keep science for Life.”

“After playing Chopin, I feel as if I had been weeping over sins that I had never committed, and mourning over tragedies that were not my own. Music always seems to me to produce that effect. It creates for one a past of which one has been ignorant, and fills one with a sense of sorrows that have been hidden from one’s tears.”

“Don't spoil him. Don't try to influence him. Your influence would be bad. The world is wide and has many marvellous people in it. Don't take away from me the one person who gives to my art whatever charm that possesses: my life as an artist depends on him.”

“I adore political parties. They are the only place left to us where people don't talk politics.”