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 shall create a new world for myself.

Sometimes I can only groan, and suffer, and pour out my despair at the piano!

Oh, how miserable it is to have no one to share your sorrows and joys, and, when your heart is heavy, to have no soul to whom you can pour out your woes.

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

If the newspapers cut me up so much that I shall not venture before the world again, I have resolved to become a house painter; that would be as easy as anything else, and I should, at any rate, still be an artist!