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.

I remember when I was growing up. My great wish was to understand who I was and how I fit in the world.

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.

Culture opens our hearts to one another. And the currency in culture is not money, but trust.

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.

I think that peace is, in many ways, a precondition of joy.

I have yet to find something that beats the power of being in love, or the power of music at its most magical.