This has been my vocation to make music of what remains.

One of the most important elements in teaching, conducting, and performing, all three, is listening.

Sometimes it is the artist's task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.

Never miss an opportunity to teach; when you teach others, you teach yourself.

One must always practice slowly. If you learn something slowly, you forget it slowly.

Another thing that I don't like to do is show too much how it goes. I do it once in a blue moon. Sometimes there are lessons when I don't pick up a violin at all.

The most important thing to do is really listen.

Ask many of us who are disabled what we would like in life and you would be surprised how few would say, 'Not to be disabled.' We accept our limitations.

I always consider myself lucky that I can actually cry listening to some music.

Every musical phrase has a purpose. It's like talking. If you talk with a particular purpose, people listen to you, but if you just recite, it's not as meaningful.

When you play a concerto with a small orchestra, you don't feel it is as important as Carnegie Hall. You try to work out all the little problems. Once that's all done, trust comes in.

Parenting should always come from a place of unconditional loving.

I'm a good dad I spend a lot of time with my kids.

Surveillance cameras might reduce crime - even though the evidence here is mixed - but no studies show that they result in greater happiness of everyone involved.

Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking.

The coward calls the brave man rash, the rash man calls him a coward.

We are the first generation of human beings to have substantial insights into the origin of our cosmos and of human life in it.

That which offers no resistance can enter where there is no space.

I feel no shame about having paintings be as grandiose and ridiculous as possible.

Geniuses never pay attention.

You can never really own real estate for instance; if you think you can, just try not paying your property taxes for a few years.