Every great work of art has two faces, one towards its own time and one towards future, towards eternity.

Music has the capacity to create a greater reality.

And in English you have this wonderful difference between listening and hearing, and that you can hear without listening, and you can listen and not hear.

Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.

There are many types of silence. There is a silence before the note, there is a silence at the end and there is a silence in the middle.

When playing music, it is possible to achieve a unique sense of peace.

An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.

Not only has the eyes taken over, but we have anaesthetised the ears through all the muzak that we hear all the time.

The tempo is the suitcase. If the suitcase is too small, everything is completely wrinkled. If the tempo is too fast, everything becomes so scrambled you can't understand it.

I can't stand being in Chicago anymore and hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto in the elevator. Because that shows me that when they come to the concert hall they listen to it in the same way.

Be pure, live a conscientious life, defend your dignity and be loving to others.

If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.

Customs, morals--is there a difference?

I trust in God, and His ways are not our ways. So we have to go with that, and there's nothing I can do about that.

If your tendency is to make sense out of chaos, start chaos.

you must take the problem as it is, and let it be what it wants to be.

We've more important studies than your fantasies and fears You know that rock's been perched up there for a hundred thousand years.

If you are not your own doctor, you are a fool.

Take something away, and your habits become clear.

To beguile the time, look like the time.