Most people ask for happiness on condition. Happiness can only be felt if you don't set any condition.

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.

To be alive, to able to see, to walk...it's all a miracle. I have adapted the technique of living life from miracle to miracle.

Love life and life will love you back. Love people and they will love you back.

Don't tell me how talented you are. Tell me how hard you work.

You cannot play the piano well unless you are singing within you.

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.

Of course there is no formula for success, except perhaps an unconditional acceptance of life, and what it brings

All my successes have been built on my failures.

The greatest of all evils is a weak government

Courage is fire, and bullying is smoke.

The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.

The palace is not safe when the cottage is not happy.

Where knowledge ends, religion begins.

Seeing much, suffering much, and studying much, are the three pillars of learning.