Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky Quotes

If you do not want to write, at least spit on a piece of paper, put it in an envelope, and send it to me. You are not taking any notice of me at all. God forgive you – all I wanted was a few words from you.

There is no doubt that even the greatest musical geniuses have sometimes worked without inspiration. This guest (inspiration) does not always respond to the first invitation. We must always work, and a self-respecting artist must not fold his hands on the pretext that he is not in the mood. If we wait for the mood, without endeavouring to meet it half-way, we easily become indolent and apathetic. We must be patient, and believe that inspiration will come to those who can master their disinclination.

In the nineteenth century, cholera struck the most modern, prosperous cities in the world, killing rich and poor alike, from Paris and London to New York City and New Orleans. In 1836, it felled King Charles X in Italy; in 1849, President James Polk in New Orleans; in 1893, the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in St. Petersburg.

The most important author of this book is, in fact, God himself, whose words, spoken for the healing of my own soul, I have rendered. And it is precisely these truths, which the Divinity has shared with me, that are the main reason why I felt an almost sacred duty to pass this book on.

Our life stories – apparently so different – are all crossed by much suffering and various dramas, behind which there always seems to be a single, almost desperate question of Man: ‘WHY?

I have understood during recent years that perhaps the most precious thing we are all looking for is a MEANING to our existence.

And in this dance of light among the leaves, I heard for the first time… music. A huge gift. From God to me.

My being ‘vibrated’ exactly as my music sounds. The fire in me burned with a great flame — and it also burned myself.

Composing was like a thirst. A thirst for love. I felt the need to be loved but, even more, I felt the need to love, to offer myself. And since I couldn't do that – as no one loved me in the way I dreamed of – I had to ‘consume’ myself in a different way, by offering something of my heart through my music.

Everything I lived was recorded by my heart much more sharply than other spirits. I felt the reality too intensely, as if my soul could be molded by the slightest breeze of wind and it didn't take long for tears to flow almost with anger from my eyes. The pain ran through my whole being in an instant.

I understood that Our Father's energy flows through everything like air through a whistle. God is like a breath that passes through people, plants, animals and all kinds of things to animate them. And his breath creates tension, harmonies and moans... It's like an expiration. (…) This energy of Our Father, which gives life and sustains the whole physical world, created the music I was perceiving. My music, which wasn't really mine...

The music flowed through me, so that I was sometimes living with the feeling that it was difficult for me to keep up with it, to capture it and to write it down on paper. I happened to actually simply transcribe into notes what my heart heard around me, from the world created by God. And for this reason, I felt somehow vaguely (…) that I owed all this to Our Father.

From the first days […] I was a woman's soul, with all its specific sensitivity, grace and fragility, trapped in a man's body.