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

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.

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.

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.

We only begin to live life when we learn to accept it on its own terms.