Frederic Chopin

Nothing is more odious than music without hidden meaning.

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.

Simplicity is the highest goal, achievable when you have overcome all difficulties.

Put all your soul into it, play the way you feel!

The Official Bulletin declared that the Poles should be as proud of me as the Germans are of Mozart; obvious nonsense.

All the same it is being said everywhere that I played too softly, or rather, too delicately for people used to the piano-pounding of the artists here.

Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art.

I am gay on the outside, especially among my own folk (I count Poles my own); but inside something gnaws at me; some presentiment, anxiety, dreams - or sleeplessness - melancholy, indifference - desire for life, and the next instant, desire for death; some kind of sweet peace, some kind of numbness, absent-mindedness.

Man is never always happy, and very often only a brief period of happiness is granted him in this world; so why escape from this dream which cannot last long?

The crowd intimidates me, its breath suffocates me. I feel paralyzed by its curious look, and the unknown faces make me dumb.

Oh, how hard it must be to die anywhere but in one's birthplace.

Simplicity is the final achievement.

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.