Frederic Chopin

It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to.  You know what I mean.  I tell my piano the things I used to tell you.

Liszt commenting on the music of Frédéric Chopin: He confided . . . those inexpressible sorrows to which the pious give vent in their communication with their Maker. What they never say except upon their knees, he said in his palpitating compositions.

Every difficulty slurred over will be a ghost to disturb your repose later on.

Dying of tuberculosis: The earth is suffocating. . . . Swear to make them cut me open, so that I won't be buried alive.