82 Quotes by Frédéric Chopin

The earth is suffocating... Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive.

After a rest in Edinburgh, where, passing a music-shop, I heard some blind man playing a mazurka of mine...

It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.

One needs only to study a certain positioning of the hand in relation to the keys to obtain with ease the most beautiful sounds, to know how to play long notes and short notes and to achieve certain unlimited dexterity. A well formed technique, it seems to me, can control and vary a beautiful sound quality.

I'm a revolutionary, money means nothing to me.

I don't know how it is, but the Germans are amazed at me and I am amazed at them for finding anything to be amazed about.

To be a great composer requires immense experience... One acquires this by listening not only to other men's work, but above all to one's own!

If I were still stupider than I am, I should think myself at the apex of my career; yet I know how much I still lack, to reach perfection; I see it the more clearly now that I live only among first-rank artists and know what each one of them lacks.

I really don't know whether any place contains more pianists than Paris, or whether you can find more asses and virtuosos anywhere.