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.

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.

I can't stand being in Chicago anymore and hearing the Brahms Violin Concerto in the elevator. Because that shows me that when they come to the concert hall they listen to it in the same way.

Nowhere in the bible did it say, “Only show compassion and empathy to those you can trust.” If we did that, we would be burying homeless people every day.

I fear very much for our kids, for low income people and for seniors.

I write from real life. I am an unrepentant eavesdropper and a collector of stories. I record bits of overheard dialogue.

People only rooted for the underdog in movies, not in middle school.

Really, one has some friends, and when one comes to think about it it is impossible to tell how one ever became friendly with them.

Teaching that impacts is not head to head, but heart to heart.

You don't realize 'till you get here what a moment in history you're a part of.

If you think you are enlightened; go home for Thanksgiving.

The glance of Love is crystal clear.

He (Tiberius) was wont to mock at the arts of physicians, and at those who, after thirty years of age, needed counsel as to what was good or bad for their bodies.