If I have known much trouble in my youth, I have also known much joy.

Why hurry over beautiful things? Why not linger and enjoy them?

I once believed that I possessed creative talent, but I have given up this idea; a woman must not desire to compose — there has never yet been one able to do it. Should I expect to be the one?

My imagination can picture no fairer happiness than to continue living for art.

Composing gives me great pleasure... there is nothing that surpasses the joy of creation, if only because through it one wins hours of self-forgetfulness, when one lives in a world of sound.

There is nothing greater than the joy of composing something oneself and then listening to it.

I wish to lead a life free from care, and I see that I shall be unhappy if I cannot always work at my art.

I will yield to popular demands only insofar as they do not betray my own convictions.

I do not want horses or diamonds - I am happy in possessing you.

My health may be better preserved if I exert myself less, but in the end doesn't each person give his life for his calling?

Treasures are no longer to be got by instrumental art.

It's all a question of imagination. Our responsibility begins with the power to imagine.

Brag is a good dog, but Holdfast is a better.

When I lost a tennis match that made me upset or hurt emotionally I would find myself going to the piano and playing for hours. It was my place of refuge and solace.

I am not sure precisely why we need to have privacy, but everyone knows for sure that we need to relax and not have to put on our social, outwardly looking face all of the time.

Africa is always only portrayed as a continent of suffering, but most figures are vastly exaggerated.

History is the depository of great actions, the witness of what is past, the example and instructor of the present, and monitor to the future.

Light and subject is inseparable. But when it is well integrated, it becomes the work of a fine masterpiece.

Let us answer a book of ink with a book of flesh and blood.

I took the right sow by the ear.

I actually think that Bandbox, by far the silliest of my books, is the best constructed of them.