The heart of the melody can never be put down on paper.
To live is not enough; we must take part.
In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things.
You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.
We ought to think that we are one of the leaves of a tree, and the tree is all humanity. We cannot live without the others, without the tree.
To retire is to begin to die.
Real understanding does not come from what we learn in books; it comes from what we learn from love of nature, of music, of man. For only what is learned in that way is truly understood.
The situation is hopeless, we must take the next step.
The most perfect technique is that which is not noticed at all.
As long as one can admire and love, then one is young forever.
I was at Mount Tamalpais near San Francisco hiking when a boulder came hurling down the mountainside and smashed my left hand. When I looked at my mangled bloody fingers, I had a strange reaction. 'Thank God I will never have to play again,' I said. The fact is that dedication to one's art does involve a sort of enslavement.
Do we dare be ourselves? That is the question that counts.
Rock n' roll is poison put to sound.
The love of one's country is a splendid thing. But why should love stop at the border?
Beauty is all about us, but how many are blind! They look at the wonder of this earth and seem to see nothing. People move hectically but give little thought to where they are going. They seek excitement ... as if they were lost and desperate.
The simplest things in music are the ones that count. The simplest thing are, of course, also the most difficult to achieve and take years of work.
The truly important things in life - love, beauty, and one's own uniqueness - are constantly being overlooked.
Bach is the supreme genius of music... This man, who knows everything and feels everything, cannot write one note, however unimportant it may appear, which is anything but transcendent. He has reached the heart of every noble thought, and has done it in the most perfect way.
Resist doing things that have no meaning for life.
Every wrong seems possible today, and is accepted. I don't accept it.
Of course, I continue to play and to practice. I think I would do so if I lived for another hundred years.
For me, Bach is like Shakespeare. He has known all and felt all. He is everything.
I do not think a day passes in my life in which I fail to look with fresh amazement at the miracle of nature.
When you play Bach like Chopin, and Chopin like Bach, something good happens.
For the past eighty years I have started each day in the same manner... I go to the piano, and I play preludes and fugues of Bach... It is a sort of benediction on the house.
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