Quotes from Glenn Gould

I cannot bear assaults of any kind, and it seems to me that the Beatles essentially were out to affront and to assault.

There's a very curious and - and almost sadistic lust for blood that overcomes the concert listener, and there's a waiting for it to happen: a waiting for the horn to fluff; a waiting for the strings to become ragged; a waiting for the conductor to forget the subdivide, you know? And it's dreadful!

I don't much care for the sunlight or bright colours of any kind.

Until I was about 13, somehow I managed to assume that everyone reacted to everything just about as I did. I took it for granted that everyone shared my passion for overcast skies. It came as quite a shock when I discovered that there were actually people who preferred sunshine.

One does not play the piano with one's fingers: one plays the piano with one's mind.

Fingers don't have much to do with playing the piano. The idea that they do must be unlearned.

The mental imagery involved with pianistic tactilia is not related to the striking of individual keys but rather to the rites of passage between notes.

The final, unfinished fugue from The Art of Fugue is the greatest piece of music ever composed.

There is a craft and a power in listening.

Isolation is the indispensable component of human happiness.

Isolation is the one sure way to human happiness.

At concerts I felt demeaned, like a vaudevillian.

I detest audiences. Not in their individual components but en masse... I think they are a force of evil.

Perhaps the most important thing that technology does is free the listener to participate in ways that in all previous periods of listening were governed by the performer.

I find myself more genuinely drawn to the essence of Beethoven in Schnabel than I ever have been by anybody.

The purpose of art is not the release of a momentary ejection of adrenaline but is, rather, the gradual, lifelong construction of a state of wonder and serenity.

When I broke 20, I said to myself, 'I will give concerts until I'm approximately 30.' And I made it a year and a half late, but, nevertheless, that's what I did. When I broke 30, I said, 'I think I should be recording until I'm about 50.'

By the time I was six, I made an important discovery that I get along much better with animals than humans.

I don't think any of the early Romantic composers knew how to write for the piano... The music of that era is full of empty theatrical gestures, full of exhibitionism, and it has a worldly, hedonistic quality that simply turns me off.

To me, the ideal artist-to-audience relationship is a one-to-zero relationship. The artist should be granted anonymity.

Chopin, Schubert, and Liszt had no idea of how to write for the piano.

Behind every silver lining, there's a cloud.

I treat recorded tapes the way a film director treats his rushes.

Concert pianists are really afraid to try out the Beethoven Fourth Concerto if the Third happens to be their specialty. That's the piece they had such success with on Long Island, by George, and it will surely bring them success in Connecticut. So first there's tremendous conservatism. And then stagnation sets in. Or it certainly did in me.