“The intellect is not a serious thing, and never has been. It is an instrument on which one plays, that is all.”

“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.”

“Perhaps one never seems so much at one's ease as when one has to play a part.”

“Art is the only serious thing in the world. And the artist is the only person who is never serious.”

“We should treat all the trivial things of life seriously, and all the serious things of life with sincere and studied triviality.”

“If one doesn't talk about a thing, it has never happened. It is simply expression that gives reality to things.”

“Perhaps, after all, America never has been discovered. I myself would say that it had merely been detected.”