Itzhak Perlman Quotes

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

I love to work with young kids.

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.

For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.

Any gifted child can potentially get in real trouble because of the way they are handled.

A sponge has that much absorbent capability and after a while you can pour water over it and nothing stays.

I look at raising funds for The Perlman Music Program as a challenge and as a way to provide opportunities for people who care about the future of classical music.

Preparing for a future in music is an expensive proposition.

For people who are really talented, what you don't say becomes extremely important. You have to judge what to say and what to leave alone so you can let the talent develop.

Perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.

Every person with a disability has a slightly different kind of disability. Not everybody has the same problems. Usually the wheelchairs are the wheelchairs. It's the same height and so on. It's a problem.

I don't walk on stage unless I'm playing with a orchestra. But when I play a recital, I'm sort of on a scooter, and I just scoot very quickly on stage, and they're saying, wow, look at this. He's so fast.

Not many people like it when they get criticism. Of course, if you have someone who does tell you and you do have a rapport, that's great. But don't rely on it. You have to rely on yourself.

When you talk about a million bucks, if you think about it very carefully, it's not that much money, if you start to divide it. You have to figure out a philosophy as to whom you want to give it to.

You decide to be a musician, you have to put in the time.

I'm now doing three things: concerts, conducting, and teaching, and they each support each other. I learn to see things from different perspectives and listen with different ears. The most important thing that you need to do is really listen.

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.

If you play something well, I don't care what it is. I mean, I don't play an electric [violin] - I tried. It's actually interesting.

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

I listen to kids play a lot.

Child prodigy is a curse because you've got all those terrible possibilities.

I'm just a one-instrument player. I have been known to play a blender, but I basically play - just play the violin.

I don't know if it's ever happened to you, but it's one of my funniest and saddest experiences, when you go into a hotel, and they have an accessible walk-in shower. So you go in and open the curtain, and there is a bench off to the side of the shower. However, the shower is rectangular. On one side there's a bench, but the faucets are across from you. So if you sit on the bench, you cannot reach the faucets.

Competition can be the most nerve-racking experience. Some people just thrive on it.

In Paris they have special wheelchairs that go through every doorway. They don't change the doorways, they change the wheelchairs. To hell with the people! If someone weighs a couple more pounds, that's it!

The most important thing to do is really listen.

That makes classical music work, the ability to improvise.

I couldn't only do one thing--I don't want the personal hell of oneness.

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

This machine, the wheelchair, I can go all over the place, but you need a place without stairs to get in.

I find personally that when I go to a place where I can't get in, I feel hostility from whatever it is, a hotel, a shop, a market, a street corner where there are no curb cuts, because somebody forgot to put them in, and where I have to go two blocks to the corner to do it. A lot of the excuses are, "Well, this is an old building." That's my favorite one. "This is an old building." It's as though 50 years ago, people with disabilities did not exist. As if the disabled are a new problem. It has always been a problem.

Life is not as easy as it could be for a person with a disability.

I can't walk very well, but I'm not onstage to do walking. I'm on the stage to play.

That's the goal, to survive your gift.

I feel that you always pay when you are a child.

I am playing the violin, that's all I know, nothing else, no education, no nothing. You just practice every day.

Believe me, I've had interviews where the person says, "So when did you start and why? What about your parents?" I say to them, "Please, have you heard of the word Google?"

A lot of society tries to put people with disabilities into one cube, and when you think about it, many, many people have different types of disabilities, and you cannot put a code that applies towards everyone - generally, they can be guidelines, but in the long run, interior designers and architects need more education on the subject. That's what's missing.

So many things can drive you mad as a child, not only music.

Just imagine yourself in a wheelchair. Go through the building. If there's a place you can't go in, it's not accessible.

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.

..I heard Ori Kam and was deeply impressed with his achievements as a violist. His technical and interpretive skills are truly unique. I see a great future for him.

Beethoven concertos ... Tchaicovsky concertos ... with a lot of these wonderful masterpieces there's always something wonderful to find ... there's always something new to find.

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

In difficult times, people just like to hear music. They like to be moved by what they hear. And music speaks different languages.

I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time.

There are people who are uncanny, who are finished products at a young age. I wasn't, thank God.

This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in five or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development.