Music is powered by ideas. If you don't have clarity of ideas, you're just communicating sheer sound.

The worst thing you can do is say to yourself, "I want to be just like somebody else." You have to absorb knowledge from someone else, but ultimately you have to find your own voice.

Music has always been transnational; people pick up whatever interests them, and certainly a lot of classical music has absorbed influences from all over the world.

With every year of playing, you want to relax one more muscle. Why? Because the more tense you are, the less you can hear.

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

I learn something not because I have to, but because I really want to. That's the same view I have for performing. I'm performing because I really want to, not because I have to bring bread back home.

One is that you have to take time, lots of time, to let an idea grow from within. The second is that when you sign on to something, there will be issues of trust, deep trust, the way the members of a string quartet have to trust one another.