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

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.

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

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.

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

As a child, you respond physically, tactically. You're delighted by sound, you're delighted by recognizing something. It's like hide and seek. Is it there? Is it not there? Is it this note? Is it not this note? It's one fantastic game.

After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.