I think anybody who goes away finds you appreciate home more when you return.

Practicing is not only playing your instrument, either by yourself or rehearsing with others - it also includes imagining yourself practicing. Your brain forms the same neural connections and muscle memory whether you are imagining the task or actually doing it.

You must have a reason to be in the places to which you go, and you must do only things that you really care about.

People will ask, 'Are you famous?' And I always answer, 'My mother thinks so.'

The tradition of classical music and the opera is such that it used to be the place where social intercourse could take place between all parts of society: politicians, industrialists, artists, citizens, etc. That tradition, I think, still exists, but it's much, much more diluted.

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

Once something is memorable, it's living and you're using it. That to me is the foundation of a creative society.