I feel that special secret current between the public and me. I can hold them with one little note in the air, and they will not breathe. That is a great, great moment.

Whatever we worship, short of God, is sure to be our undoing.

The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.

The trouble with women is men; the trouble with men, men.

Love unlocks doors and opens windows that weren't even there before.

The hardest-learned lesson: that people have only their kind of love to give, not our kind.

A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.

I am tired before the concert, not afterward.

Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go.

Even when I'm sick and depressed, I love life.

The seasons are what a symphony ought to be: four perfect movements in harmony with each other.

When I sit in Paris in a cafe, surrounded by people, I don't sit casually - I go over a certain sonata in my head and discover new things all the time.

It took great courage to ask a beautiful young woman to marry me. Believe me, it is easier to play the whole Petrushka on the piano.

People are always setting conditions for happiness... I love life without condition.

Sometimes I think, not so much am I a pianist, but a vampire. All my life I have lived off the blood of Chopin.

When I play, I make love – it is the same thing.

I'm a free person; I feel terribly free. They could put me in chains and I still would be free because my thoughts would be mine - and that's all I want to have.

What good are vitamins? Eat a lobster, eat a pound of caviar - live! If you are in love with a beautiful blonde with an empty face and no brains at all, don't be afraid. Marry her! Live!

Music is not a hobby, not even a passion with me; music is me. I feel what people get out of me is this outlook on life, which comes out in my music. My music is the last expression of all that.