Live and die on this day. . . Live and die on this day.
When it becomes clear that no one else shares your level of passion, you are where you belong.
The high note is not the only thing.
Sometimes pianists try to sound like singers: me personally, I try to sound like a Bösendorfer.
We all have a destiny in accordance with the breadth of our shoulders. My shoulders are broad.
I hope I have given back half the joy music has given me.
My strength is my enthusiasm.
I like to work as little as possible to make the most money possible.
We need a Napoleon. An Alexander. Except that Napoleon lost in the end, and Alexander flamed out and died young. We need a Julius Caesar, except that he made himself a dictator, and died for it.
Avoiding any of the tenets of amateurism, after all, certainly does not make you a good professional. Perhaps it is better to see fearless flair and professional steeliness as two ideas which must always coexist. One half of sport may be about harnessing human talent, but the other half depends on setting it free.
Since [Rousseau's] time, and largely thanks to him, the Ego has steadily tended to efface itself, and, for purposes of model, to become a manikin on which the toilet of education is to be draped in order to show the fit or misfit of the clothes. The object of study is the garment, not the figure.