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.

Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe; a moment that never was before and never will be again.

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 person who works and is never bored is never old. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for age.

The cello is like a beautiful woman who has not grown older, but younger with time, more slender, more supple, more graceful.

In music, in the sea, in a flower, in a leaf, in an act of kindness... I see what people call God in all these things.

The greatest respect an artist can pay to music is to give it life.