I grew up in a musical family, but nobody was a professional musician.

We live in the least ugly time in history. If you look at back when Beethoven was writing, half the kids were dying, mothers were dying at childbirth, there were more wars going on then than there are now. People wrote the most beautiful things during the ugliest times.

If you mess up the tiniest little thing in the Beethoven concerto, or the phrasing isn't just exactly perfectly executed, Beethoven brings out the worst in the best violinist. You almost never hear a satisfying performance, because it doesn't play itself.

I don't want to portray myself as a daredevil. I'm not at all.

So much of performing is a mind game.

I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity.

Kids need to be structured in some way, but you don't want to force something down their throats that they have no interest in.