It is good medicine to go to a concert hall and forget the harshness of what's going on. It can be a very positive thing.

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.

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.

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.

While wisdom dictates the need for education, education does not necessarily make one wise.

Man's brain, enlarged fortuitously, invented words in an ambitious effort to learn how to think, only to have them usurped by his emotions. But we still try." -- Nero Wolf in Death of a Dude.

Alan invented all sorts of ways of expressing things so that only he and I understood. He used language as a place for us to hide.

Integrity, wisdom, skill, intelligence – such things are forged in adversity.

Conscience is thoroughly well-bred and soon leaves off talking to those who do not wish to hear it.

A man to whom you do a favor will not understand if you say nothing, make no noise, just walk away. You may cause more trouble by refusing a bribe than by accepting it.

Believe in better is one of the most powerful words you can use in the business community.

Policy is driven by more than politics, however. It is equally driven by ideas.

God cursed those who are the sons of Israel, through David and Jesus, the son of Mary. Those people, God made monkeys and pigs.

To be a saint is to be yourself.