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

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.

At every concert I leave a lot to the moment. I must have the unexpected, the unforeseen. I want to risk, to dare. I want to be surprised by what comes out. I want to enjoy it more than the audience. That way the music can bloom anew. It's like making love. The act is always the same, but each time it's different.

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.

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

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!

Composing a concert is like composing a menu.... If you start with light pieces and play a 45-minute sonata after the interlude, it's like starting dinner with hors d'oeuvres and dessert and finishing with a Châteaubriand and vegetables.

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.

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.

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

Yes, I am very lucky, but I have a little theory about this. I have noticed through experience and observation that providence, nature, God, or what I would call the power of creation seems to favor human beings who accept and love life unconditionally, and I am certainly one who does with all my heart.

Never sound pompous. You always sound noble, noble. Absolute character of music is nobility. Even popular music can be noble, you see. If it's not noble, then it's not very good... Music is an art of emotion, of nobility, of dignity, of greatness, of love, of tenderness. All that must be brought out in music but never a show of pompousness.

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.

Sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.

When I was young, I used to have successes with women because I was young. Now I have successes with women because I am old. Middle age was the hardest part.

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

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