Piano & Music Quote Bank

If I miss one day of practice, I notice it. If I miss two days, the critics notice it. If I miss three days, the audience notices it.

Practice puts brains in your muscles.

I never practice; I always play.

When you play, never mind who listens to you.

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

Slow practice is the key to sure and rapid technical progress.

There is no shortcut to anywhere worth going.

Repetition is the mother of all learning.

I play the notes as they are written, but it is God who makes the music.

The most important thing in music is what is not in the notes.

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine.

I make them wait. The audience must always feel I have something to give.

Perfection itself is imperfection.

Music must never offend the ear, but must please the listener, or, in other words, must never cease to be music.

When I am completely myself, entirely alone, or during the night when I cannot sleep, it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly.

A great pianist has to be a great storyteller.

Music is the silence between the notes.

Music is the arithmetic of sounds as optics is the geometry of light.

Music is the best means we have of digesting time.

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

I have to play, like I have to eat.

I always begin a piece with the feeling that I am improvising it for the first time.

The key to a good interpretation is to be honest with the music.

Where words fail, music speaks.

The piano keys are black and white but they sound like a million colors in your mind.

Easy reading is damn hard writing. Easy playing is damn hard practising.

Teach the music, not the piece.

You play the way you are.

Music is the universal language of mankind.

The first virtue of a pianist is rhythm.

A child should be taught the love of music before its rules.

Don’t play what’s there. Play what’s not there.

The piano is the easiest instrument to play badly, and the hardest to play well.

I was born to play. The piano is my second home.

Through music we can imagine and explore worlds beyond ourselves.

I am only a public entertainer who has understood his time.

The purpose of art is the lifelong construction of a state of wonder.

I want to make music so beautiful that even my mother can’t criticize it.

In music, melody is the simplest thing — and the hardest.

Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.

Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.

Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without.

Without music, life would be a mistake.

Music is the shorthand of emotion.

Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination, and life to everything.

Music is the divine way to tell beautiful, poetic things to the heart.

A painter paints pictures on canvas. But musicians paint their pictures on silence.