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!

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.

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

When I sit in Paris in a cafe, surrounded by people, I don’t sit casually – I go over a certain sonata in my head and discover new things all the time.

I’m passionately involved in life: I love its change, its color, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings – it’s all a miracle.

Even when I’m sick and depressed, I love life.

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

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

Sometimes when I sit own 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

Of course there is no formila for success except perhaps and unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings.