There was a very famous musician in our family. He was a great violinist, an internationally known teacher. He was Leopold Auer.

But if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris.

Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee

Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect.

I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture.

Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully

Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.

The world will lose its treasures if everyone depends on someone to think for him/her! The world will lose its pleasures if everyone depends on someone to make him/her happy!

Asking for blessings, receiving blessings, becoming a blessing, becoming a source of blessings

I’ve got to stop this. Stop worrying about the why. Stop forcing what was happening into the realm of impossible. Stop hiding behind excuses. Stop being afraid to step out on faith.

Beauty at 70 years old isn't the same as beauty at 20 years old, but it is stunning nonetheless.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious.

I think that's the key to being a director: to be able to get the shot and move on quickly.

Heresie is the school of pride.

Just having an awareness of God's mercy and compassion for us is a great motivation for us to be merciful and compassionate to other people and to take steps toward encountering God.

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.

How many twenty-second-century bureaucrats did it take to change a light panel? We'll have a sub-committee meeting and get back to you with an estimate.