My piano is to me what a ship is to the sailor, what a steed is to the Arab. It is the intimate personal depository of everything that stirred wildly in my brain during the most impassioned days of my youth. It was there that all my wishes, all my dreams, all my joys, and all my sorrows lay.

An Artist's Journey: Lettres D'un Bachelier Es Musique, 1835-1841 (ed. University of Chicago Press, 1989) - ISBN: 9780226485102