Nothing in music is hard, just unfamiliar.

Music can shoot through the musician like lightening through the sky if that music is unobstructed by thoughts.

Just before I play, I like to feel that no-one has ever played the piano before, that I'm in complete virgin territory, and that every note I play is the most beautiful sound I've ever heard.

It is good to view things as familiar or unfamiliar, rather than as difficult or easy.

Ultimately, musicians of the world must come to realize the potential of their calling... If the musician is illuminated from within, he becomes a lamp that lights other lamps.

If one's life depends on doing something right, as in the case of the tightrope walker, one will practice on a much deeper level.

I never call myself modern or traditional, in our out, new or used, because I prefer not to be hemmed in by rigid definitions.

Mastery is playing whatever you're capable of playing-every time-WITHOUT THINKING.

In many cases, the decision to study music has robbed them of the ability to play music. They have lost respect for music that comes from within because they have been programmed to feel "unworthy".

In fear, we expect; with love, we accept.

There is no easy or difficult; only familiar and unfamiliar.

One does not have humor. It has you.

What is any of this to us? Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.

Thousands of mercenaries, who have trained in camps on the territory of Chechnya as well as come in from abroad, are actually preparing to impose extremist ideas on the whole world.

What gets in our way is history and culture and religion and economic conditions. It is part of the hypnosis of our social conditioning.

I never met Putin, I don't know who Putin is. He said one nice thing about me. He said I'm a genius. I said thank you very much to the newspaper and that was the end of it. I never met Putin.

My dad and mom believed that you do what you have to do in private and don't make a big deal out of it. Just try to help people as much as you can.

Do not despise the bottom rungs in the ascent to greatness.

Human beings were given a left foot and a right foot to make a mistake first to the left, then to the right, left again and repeat.

What horrible things would you have to do in your life to get woven into Hades's underwear?

If you haven't found it yet, keep looking.