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.

To the whole world you might be just one person, but to one person you might just be the whole world.

What do we teach our children? . . . We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique . . . You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything.

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.

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.

The simplest things in music are the ones that count. The simplest thing are, of course, also the most difficult to achieve and take years of work.

You do not lose your value or preciousness when you grow to be a adult. You are still that miraculous creation. You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.