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

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.

But in the first Gulf war the United Kingdom was not under any threat from Iraq, and is still less so in the second one. Then there is no justification for obstructing freedom of information, particularly as nations have a right to know what their soldiers are being used for.

A handful of soldiers is always better than a mouthful of arguments.

Our brave soldiers and support personnel are engaged in a battle as important as any the United States has ever before waged, for the success of democracy in Iraq is a crucial test of the ideals this Nation was founded upon.

Our main battle has always been against Israeli soldiers and Jewish settlers.

But it's been a great, humbling - and I've been very honored to have the opportunity to serve and to lead and to be the representative of our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who are in Washington. And it's been the greatest honor of my life.

There's another issue here - and I have some limits as to what I can say - but there's some real question as to the viability of the chemical masks, the protective gear used by our soldiers.

One of the great joys this year and the year before has been how all of the people in this body, men and women, Republicans and Democrats, have worked together so well with our chairman and the chairman of the full committee to address the issues of housing for our soldiers.

Soldiers generally win battles; generals get credit for them.

Toy Soldiers was my introduction to film. I certainly didn't think I was doing art by any stretch of the imagination.

The Syrian regime is helping the insurgency in Iraq and allowing all kinds of militants to come in and out, and go to Iraq to attack random soldiers and innocent people.

I congratulate you, my brave countrymen and fellow soldiers, on the spirit and success with which you have executed this important part of our enterprise.

Diplomats are just as essential to starting a war as soldiers are for finishing it... You take diplomacy out of war, and the thing would fall flat in a week.

The soldiers did go away and their towns were torn down; and in the Moon of Falling Leaves (November), they made a treaty with Red Cloud that said our country would be ours as long as grass should grow and water flow.

The worst... was what the Pakistani soldiers did to the Bengali women after their failed rebellion.

I don't think so, but it's always in the back of my mind that many of the soldiers being wounded and killed in Iraq are about the same age as my kids. My godson is going over soon, so the war's about to get personal for me.

I want it understood that all these men fought for principle, not for plunder, and that they were true-hearted, honorable soldiers, fighting for what they esteemed was a righteous cause.

Christians, like slaves and soldiers, ask no questions.

And to me, it was interesting, some of the people I had interviewed who knew the insides to this program said that they also, to create anxiety and upset in the soldiers, they take Bibles and they trash them.

In heaven we shall appear, not in armour, but in robes of glory. But here these are to be worn night and day; we must walk, work, and sleep in them, or else we are not true soldiers of Christ.

Without the brave efforts of all the soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines and their families, this Nation, along with our allies around the world, would not stand so boldly, shine so brightly and live so freely.

There are few men more superstitious than soldiers. They are, after all, the men who live closest to death.

It wasn't a new idea. During the war against the French we had this kind of broadcast for the French soldiers.