The Steinway piano is such an incomparable instrument. Due to its virtues, I am able to express all my musical feelings.

Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.

In times of totalitarian or autocratic rule, music (indeed culture in general) is often the only avenue of independent thought. It is the only way people can meet as equals, and exchange ideas. Culture then becomes primarily the voice of the oppressed and it takes over from politics as a driving force for change.

I don't believe that the entire world is constantly anti-Semitic.

Not only has the eyes taken over, but we have anaesthetised the ears through all the muzak that we hear all the time.

There are probably many people in Israel who believe that Wagner, who died in 1883, lived in Berlin in 1942 and was friends with Hitler.

I'm not naive. I know perfectly well that there isn't a single Arab or Muslim in the world who would say: There has to be a Jewish state in the Middle East.