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I think I am in the classic position of a woman artist who in order to maintain a marriage is obliged to trim herself so as not to make her husband feel—what? Something a man is not supposed to have to feel? This must be one of the reasons V is so against it when I have to do publicity. It’s also p…

The harbour. I can hardly comprehend its constant differentness from itself. Today wide slow ridges, ten feet apart, move towards me at a slant and softly collapse against the low stone wall. Taking notes—this little discipline—is a defence against the blank wordlessness that overcomes me when I st…

To Paul Crossley’s piano masterclass at the Con. After three hours of intense concentration I was completely exhausted. His teaching was very challenging. He was not a giver of praise or even of encouragement, except to one girl who played Ravel; everyone else played Debussy. I loved the language h…

At the Sydney International Piano Competition I sat in the second row where one can see the sweat splashing off their noses and chins and soaking the hair on the backs of their necks. I’d been in a mood for never hearing Mozart again, but a Frenchman played a rondo with such airy clarity and creamy…

He said that I was very ‘touchy’. I said that this was true. He asked what he did, or was, that made him hard to live with. After a lot of thought I said it was his tendency to enjoy stressing the negative in everything that came up; that it made me very tired, as if I were dragging behind me a hea…