Stephen Hough

I wanted to be a disc jockey.

— Stephen Hough

America has been central to my life.

— Stephen Hough

I really feel something's missing if I'm not writing.

— Stephen Hough

Freedom comes with the impossibility of choosing.

— Stephen Hough

Traveling the road can be quite tiresome.

— Stephen Hough

There are many doors to the heart.

— Stephen Hough

Classical music thinks in centuries, not four-year terms.

— Stephen Hough

I like the extras in life. Concentrating on serious things doesn't mean you can't also enjoy the lighter ones.

— Stephen Hough

I'm not really a professional composer; I just compose now and then when someone asks me to.

— Stephen Hough

I once nodded off during one of my own concerts. While I was playing.

— Stephen Hough

Most people spend their life trying to get away from Catholicism. Amazingly, I chose it.

— Stephen Hough

Out of silence is born concentration, and from that comes learning.

— Stephen Hough

My principal commitment is playing the piano. But I always loved words.

— Stephen Hough

I have had a place in New York in the musicians' district on the Upper West Side since 1986.

— Stephen Hough

I've twice been on the point of giving up my performing career to train for the priesthood.

— Stephen Hough

Painting is just a hobby. I really don't think of it much more than that. But writing music and writing words... my…

— Stephen Hough

I don't listen to music a lot in that I rarely sit down and put on a CD because I really want…

— Stephen Hough

I've loved Alfred Cortot's playing from an early age, and I never tire of hearing his recordings, particularly Chopin and Schumann from…

— Stephen Hough

When you're a kid, Beethoven is Beethoven, but as I've grown older, my astonishment at the sheer inventiveness of the man has…

— Stephen Hough

Unlike sport, music is not about winning or keeping fit or promoting your town or school; it's about celebrating, to a level…

— Stephen Hough

I love food, but if I find a restaurant I like in a new city, I can eat every meal there, and…

— Stephen Hough

To me, spirituality is the everyday stuff which we're dealing with all the time. It's not going into some ecstatic trance. It's…

— Stephen Hough

Whether such socialism is foolish naivety or heroic idealism is a matter of opinion, but what is certain is that, however many…

— Stephen Hough

They both changed the way we hear the sound of the piano, both of them inventors of sonority: Chopin took bel canto…

— Stephen Hough

One of the things that touches me most when I play for an audience is that although we may be unable to…

— Stephen Hough

The piano is an instrument that can easily sound overly thick, and I love to think that I can work with textures…

— Stephen Hough

There must be so many people who have various artistic talents that, for whatever reason, just have no way of expressing them.…

— Stephen Hough

In Britten or Berg, there's a tension between the sweet and the sour, between the familiar and the unfamiliar, the tonal and…

— Stephen Hough

Once or twice, I've taken the Gideon Bible out of the drawer, opened it at random, and found myself stuck in the…

— Stephen Hough

If you are not living in the same area when you are looking for property, it is a nightmare because you come…

— Stephen Hough

If you arrive at a concert ready to play your piece, that's not nearly good enough. You must have your music ready…

— Stephen Hough

It's so easy for all the success in the world to suddenly end, and I'm quite aware of that.

— Stephen Hough

For about four years, all I did was watch television. I suppose my parents should have stopped me.

— Stephen Hough

Musicians keep playing when the lights go out, when people are suffering, confused, or angry.

— Stephen Hough

The daily glitter of skyscrapers competing with the stars is an unnecessary, unforgivable decadence.

— Stephen Hough

Playing the piano is incredibly personal... But when it's your own piece, it's doubly so.

— Stephen Hough

Few occupations pass the solitary hours more fruitfully than the playing of a musical instrument.

— Stephen Hough

Brahms is life-changing every time. And though I love him, I can't say that about Mompou.

— Stephen Hough

In anything, there has to be that moment of fasting, really, in order to enjoy the feast.

— Stephen Hough

I'd never thought about living in London until about 1999.

— Stephen Hough