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

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.

There are some days I take my violin out and it feels dreadful, like nothing is responding, and I want to sell it and get rid of it. And the next day suddenly the skies open up and the sound is glorious again. So it's like a relationship: There are good days and bad days.

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.

We live in the least ugly time in history.

So much of performing is a mind game.

There are some great teachers who have had great students, but they themselves can't play a note. I don't understand it, because the most I learned from my teacher was just hearing him play.