Quotes from Arthur Rubinstein

Sometimes when I sit down to practice and there is no one else in the room, I have to stifle an impulse to ring for the elevator man and offer him money to come in and hear me.

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.

I am tired before the concert, not afterward.

I'm passionately involved in life: I love its change, its color, its movement. To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle.

The result was magnificent . . . I became the father of two girls and two boys, lovely children by good fortune they all look like my wife.

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

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.

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.

To be alive, to be able to see, to walk, to have houses, music, paintings - it's all a miracle. I have adopted the technique of living life miracle to miracle.

When I sit in Paris in a cafe, surrounded by people, I don't sit casually - I go over a certain sonata in my head and discover new things all the time.

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

I have found that if you love life, life will love you back.

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

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!

When I play, I make love – it is the same thing.

People are always setting conditions for happiness... I love life without condition.

Even when I'm sick and depressed, I love life.

Life is the game that must be played, this truth at least, good friends, we know; so live and laugh, nor be dismayed as one by one the phantoms go.

My father, good or bad, mistakes or no, had a direct line from his heart to the music to the people, to the audience. He played with logic and his own inner truth.

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.

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

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