Classical music is one of the best things that ever happened to mankind. If you get introduced to it in the right way, it becomes your friend for life.

When we have a good balance between thinking and feeling... our actions and lives are always the richer for it.

Music is one of the ways we can achieve a kind of shorthand to understand each other.

Bach takes you to a very quiet place within yourself, to the inner core, a place where you are calm and at peace.

Many of the Central Asians know Russian, and Ted Levin speaks it fluently. I speak Chinese, but Mongolian is completely different, so we had to have translators.

My teacher, my great cello teacher Leonard Rose, was such a great cellist, and nurturing man, very patient. But I grew up not only admiring him, but obviously Casals, Rostrotovich, Jacqueline du Pre, and many others, including many of my peers and contemporaries.

When people ask me how they should approach performance, I always tell them the professional musician should aspire to the state of the beginner.