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.

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

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

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

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

To be alive, to able to see, to walk...it's all a miracle. I have adapted the technique of living life from miracle to miracle.

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!

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

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.

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

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

For what is love itself, for the one we love best? - an enfolding of immeasurable cares which yet are better than any joys outside our love.

What others see in you now is just a MILD chapter of you

A modern culture built on the back of dying gods immerses me.

What is a great life? It is the dreams of youth realised in old age.

Only when one has lost all curiosity about the future has one reached the age to write an autobiography.

I am a pack of nerves while waiting for the moment, and this feeling grows and grows and grows and then it explodes, it is a physical joy, a dance, space and time united. Yes, yes, yes, yes!

Only by God?s grace have I made it to see today and only by God?s grace will I ever see tomorrow.

I am not an animal! I am a human being! I…am…a man!

Nothing is more arrogant than the weakness which feels itself supported by power.

I’ll go and help. (Chris) What are we supposed to do with you, Chris? Lob you at them? (Wulf)