Perfection itself is imperfection.

My future is in my past and my past is my present. I must now make the present my future.

If you want me to play only the notes without any specific dynamics, I will never make one mistake.

I am a general. My soldiers are the keys and I have to command them.

Perfection itself is imperfection.

I must tell you I take terrible risks. Because my playing is very clear, when I make a mistake you hear it. If you want me to play only the notes without any specific dynamics, I will never make one mistake. Never be afraid to dare.

My face is my passport.

Always there should be a little mistake here and there - I am for it. The people who don't do mistakes are cold like ice. It takes risk to make a mistake. If you don't take risk, you are boring.

As far as practicing is concerned, I usually try to do one to two hours a day. It isn't good to practice too much, or your playing becomes too mechanical.

Behind the notes, something different is told, and that's what the interpreter must find out. He may sit down and play one passage one way and then perhaps exaggerate the next, but, in any event, he must do something with the music. The worst thing is not to do anything.

For me, the intellect is always the guide but not the goal of the performance. Three things have to be coordinated, and not one must stick out. Not too much intellect because it can become scholastic. Not too much heart because it can become schmaltz. Not too much technique because you become a mechanic.

I loved singing. But can you imagine my voice in an opera house?

I may play the same program from one recital to the next, but I will play it differently, and because it is always different, it is always new.

I studied with Felix Blumenfeld, who had studied piano with Anton Rubinstein and composition with Tchaikovsky. Felix, my professor, was the right hand of Anton Rubinstein. Blumenfeld knew his playing by heart, from every angle.

I tried playing for the public, and I selected music that I thought would be pleasing to them. Times are different now. Today, I play the music I want, and I just try to do my best.

I was a terrible student. For me, to take a book home was a trial.

Imitation is a caricature. Any imitation. Find out for yourself.

It is important for the musician to learn as much about the composer as possible and to study the music he has written. Then, even a short piece by Brahms or Chopin can be played with much more understanding.

Life is very busy now. I find that in today's cities, the public is very tired after working the whole day. When concerts start at eight o'clock, the wife pushes the husband to go to the concert, where some promptly fall asleep!

Scriabin slept with Chopin under his pillow, and I slept with Wagner under mine. I could not concentrate on memorizing Bach fugues, but I had all of 'Gotterdammerung' in my fingers.

Scriabin, as you know, is a mystic composer. His music is supersensuous, superromantic, and supermysterious. Everything is super; it is all a little overboard. Anyway, my parents were pleased that I played for him.

The most important thing is to make a percussive instrument a singing instrument. Teachers should stress this aspect in their instruction, but it seems that very few of them actually do.

The score is not a bible, and I am never afraid to dare. The music is behind those dots.

To be able to produce many varieties of sound, now that is what I call technique, and that is what I try to do. I don't adhere to any methods, because I simply don't believe in them. I think each pianist must ultimately carve his own way, technically and stylistically.

Without false modesty, I feel that, when I'm on the stage, I'm the king, the boss of the situation.

You have to open the music, so to speak, and see what's behind the notes because the notes are the same whether it is the music of Bach or someone else.

The piano is an orchestra with 88 things, you know.

It is only imperfection that complains of what is imperfect. The more perfect we are the more gentle and quiet we become towards the defects of others.

As machines become more and more efficient and perfect, so it will become clear that imperfection is the greatness of man.

To bear with patience wrongs done to oneself is a mark of perfection, but to bear with patience wrongs done to someone else is a mark of imperfection and even of actual sin.

It belongs to the imperfection of everything human that man can only attain his desire by passing through its opposite.

Persuade thyself that imperfection and inconvenience are the natural lot of mortals, and there will be no room for discontent, neither for despair.

Imperfection clings to a person, and if they wait till they are brushed off entirely, they would spin for ever on their axis, advancing nowhere.

Even imperfection itself may have its ideal or perfect state.

The fact of storytelling hints at a fundamental human unease, hints at human imperfection. Where there is perfection there is no story to tell.

As a real person, he wouldn't last a minute, would he? But drama is about imperfection. And we've moved away from the aspirational hero. We got tired of it, it was dull. If I was House's friend, I would hate it. How he so resolutely refuses to be happy or take the kind-hearted road. But we don't always like morally good people, do we?

All imperfection is easier to tolerate if served up in small doses.

The fastest way to break the cycle of perfectionism and become a fearless is mother is to give up the idea of doing it perfectly - indeed to embrace uncertainty and imperfection.

Perfection itself is imperfection.

Both our senses and our passions are a supply to the imperfection of our nature; thus they show that we are such sort of creatures as to stand in need of those helps which higher orders of creatures do not.

On the contrary, I'm a strong believer in the necessity of imperfection coming into the film.

There is a kind of beauty in imperfection.

If you look closely at a tree you'll notice it's knots and dead branches, just like our bodies. What we learn is that beauty and imperfection go together wonderfully.

God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.

You'll remember Dr. Rice said that several times: It was not a warning about the place and the method and the time - it was a general warning. And that points out the imperfection, if you would, of our intelligence.

Therefore it does not help to sneer at the imperfection of today's reality or to preach absolutes as a daily agenda.

There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection.

Evil is only imperfection, that which is not complete, which is becoming, but has not yet found its end.

I feel like the live record thing is something that I've been getting used to as the years go by and with this being my second one, I'm continuing to learn what works and what doesn't work. A live record is an example of that authenticity and that realness that you find in imperfection and you can hear that in this record.