I recommend my students not to be professional unless they really have to be. I tell them, 'If you love music, sell Hoovers or be a plumber. Do something useful with your life.'

Music is the wine that fills the cup of silence.

Quiet is the absence of sound. Silence is the presence of silence.

If the audience doesn't hear what is going on, is it going on?

Usually people think that it is the musicians who create the music, but in fact it is music who creates the musicians.

What has changed in 40 years? It’s very simple: 40 years ago there was a market economy. Today there is a market society – today everything, including ethics, has a price.

A mistake is always forgivable, rarely excusable and always unacceptable.

Understanding is simple. Knowing is complicated.

I'm not really interested in music. Music is just a means of creating a magical state.

Music so wishes to be heard that it sometimes calls on unlikely characters to give it voice.

We know others to the extent that we know ourselves.

No one can beat Momma. She made me the person I am today. The way I think and act and move and talk and speak. It's all because of her.

London 2012 is all about winning a medal. Not just any medal, the gold medal.

You watch the Supreme Court in action on these cases, and they are a conflicted court. However, when it comes to speech issues generally, the court has been protective.

I could have been better. That's my goal now, to be better.

For years I exercised to be thinner, and I never got the results I wanted. Now I determine my weight by how my clothes feel.

Knowledge is power only as long as you keep your mouth shut.

Every time a story about me appears in a newspaper, I am injured professionally.

Our limbic system sets the mind's emotional tone and stores our highly charged emotional memories.

The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.

I think the biggest innovations of the twenty-first century will be the intersection of biology and technology. A new era is beginning, just like the digital one was when I was his age.