Another thing that I don't like to do is show too much how it goes. I do it once in a blue moon. Sometimes there are lessons when I don't pick up a violin at all.

One of the most important elements in teaching, conducting, and performing, all three, is listening.

Sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.

Never miss an opportunity to teach; when you teach others, you teach yourself.

One must always practice slowly. If you learn something slowly, you forget it slowly.

The most important thing to do is really listen.

Ask many of us who are disabled what we would like in life and you would be surprised how few would say, 'Not to be disabled.' We accept our limitations.

I always consider myself lucky that I can actually cry listening to some music.

Every musical phrase has a purpose. It's like talking. If you talk with a particular purpose, people listen to you, but if you just recite, it's not as meaningful.

When you play a concerto with a small orchestra, you don't feel it is as important as Carnegie Hall. You try to work out all the little problems. Once that's all done, trust comes in.

For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.

They ran to the museums for paintings. I ran to the roof for sunsets

Let all things be done in order, with right and decency. Those things are worth a man's life or two. Life without would be a hell, indeed.

Christmas gives us the opportunity to pause and reflect on the important things around us - a time when we can look back on the year that has passed and prepare for the year ahead.

If a teacher does not involve himself, his values, his commitments, in the course of discussion, why should the students?

We have students at the university say on a regular basis, "You're asking us to think and no one has ever done that in school."

People who hate in concrete terms are dangerous. People who manage to hate only in abstracts are the ones worth having for your friends.

If you're an independent, you don't get on TV. And in the rare instances that you do get on, you get a fraction of what that very same movie would get if it came in through Fox or Viacom.

I simply cannot understand the passion that some people have for making themselves thoroughly uncomfortable and then boasting about it afterwards.

The more complex and overwhelming the threat to a protagonist, the better the opportunity for the author to create a compelling conflict and a dramatic resolution.

Not seeing people permits us to imagine them with every perfection.