I would rather have ideas and some difficulties of technique than a perfect technique and no ideas.

You must play for the love of music. Perfect technique is not as important as making music from the heart.

When I started learning the cello, I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice.

There is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about - irony, joy, human suffering, love.

All my life I wanted to play music with love to every member of the audience.

Capitalism, communism ... it's all garbage.

Explain to me, please, why in our literature and art so often people absolutely incompetent in this field have the final word.

I like coming to the United States because the United States played an important role in my life.

I never studied, but I had the best teachers.

It is my aim, my destination in life to make the cello as beloved an instrument as the violin and piano.

You know creators, composers, need a palette for life, a color for life.

Be yourself because an original is worth more than just a copy.

How was I going to break it to my sister and brother that I was now a demon lord?

It’s not my fault that these are the problems I’ve been put on this earth to deal with, right? They’re petty, they piss me off, and they’re all mine

If Mark Twain had had Twitter, he would have been amazing at it. But he probably wouldn't have gotten around to writing Huckleberry Finn.

For spiritual teachers, it is important not to identify with the image people inevitably have of them.

Every father knows at once too much and too little about his own son.

Once freedom lights its beacon in man's heart, the gods are powerless against him.

One does not substitute oneself for the past, one merely adds to it a new link.

Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.

I am not, and never have been, a man of the right. My position was on the left and is now in the centre of politics.