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 com….

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.….

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 no….

Love life and life will love you back. Love people and they will love you back..

You cannot play the piano well unless you are singing within you..

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

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

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

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

...no formula for success [exists] except, perhaps, an unconditional acceptance of life and what it brings." "I accept life unconditionally. Most peo….

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 d….

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, painti….

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 tim….

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 am tired before the concert, not afterward..

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 mo….

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 a….

Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go..

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 w….

I was born very, very lazy and I don't always practice very long. but I must say, in my defense, that it is not so good, in a musical way, to overpra….

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 harde….