I love conducting. What I'm tired of is music administration. I don't want that. I just want to make music.

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.

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

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.

How terribly sad it was that people are made in such a way that they get used to something as extraordinary as living.

Let the greater part of the news thou hearest be the least part of what thou believest.

The role of the comedian is to say 'Wait a minute' when a consensus starts to form.

Things said to a reporter in confidence should be kept in confidence.

People still talk about a British sense of humour, or French slapstick or how the Germans have no sense of humour - and it's just rubbish. I do strongly feel that we are all the bloody same.

It is not at all simple to understand the simple.

Running is real. It’s all joy and woe, hard as diamond. It makes you weary beyond comprehension, but it also makes you free.

My mother is Italian and my dad's Irish. In my family, we're expressive. Nobody holds back.

A subject emerges from an interaction between my self, my I, and my medium.

Honestly I feel comfortable starting and relieving. I've done both a lot. I really don't have a preference except which one gets me to the big leagues and allows me to excel the most.