Actors want to do Shakespeare again and again, or want to do Hamlet. When you hear one guy do Hamlet and another guy do it, it's going to be a whole different experience.

There are days that I get neurotic with the instrument [violin]. Every little adjustment will change the balance for good or for bad. It's kind of a miracle, the way the whole thing works as an acoustical whole, so perfectly balanced that any little thing will - which also means the weather, the humidity.

When you play for ticket-holders, you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted.

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.

You only live once, so I try to say yes to everything.

Being a classical musician, you're doing many things anyway. One day you're doing Bach concerto and the next you're doing some avant-garde thing. It's just another hat that I'm allowed to wear.

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