Throughout my career, nervousness and stage-fright have never left me before playing. And each of the thousands of concerts I have played at, I feel as bad as I did the very first time.

The art of not playing in tempo--one has to learn it. And the art of not playing what is written on the printed paper.

When we play an unaccompanied Bach suite we may compare ourselves to an actor in Shakespeare's day, creating scenery which did not exist at all, through the power of declamation and suggestion. So in Bach. There is but one voice -- and many voices have to be suggested.

For twelve years I studied and worked at them every day, and I was nearly 25 before I had the courage to play one of them in public. Before I did, no violinist or cellist had ever played a Suite in its entirety.

Music must serve a purpose; it must be a part of something larger than itself, a part of humanity.

You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.

How could anybody think of Bach as 'cold' when these [cello] suites seem to shine with the most glittering kind of poetry," Casals said. "As I got on with the study I discovered a new world of space and beauty... the feelings I experienced were among the purest and most intense in my artistic life!