Musician

I'm an acoustical person.

I listen to kids play a lot.

The thing is that I always consider myself lucky that I can actually cry listening to some music.

I don't feel that the conductor has real power. The orchestra has the power, and every member of it knows instantaneously if you're just beating time.

An amazing gift in a young child is, in some ways, an abnormality.

A talented child will have a schedule that is horrendous. You get up and practice, go to school, practice some more, eat dinner, and then you have homework.

A lot of society tries to put people with disabilities into one cube, and when you think about it, many, many people have different types of disabilities, and you cannot put a code that applies to towards everyone - generally, they can be guidelines, but in the long run, interior designers and architects need more education on the subject.

I am an eternal optimist. I always say 'Yihyeh Tov' or 'It'll get better.'

In the musician, there is a tendency to have a narrowness. It's all compartmentalized. I am playing the violin; that's all I know, nothing else, no education, no nothing. You just practice every day.

I say to string players in small chamber orchestras, 'it's always easy to become a passenger on the journey in sound, just adding volume to the whole. But if you play in an individual way, it makes the difference between good and great sound in an orchestra.'

The difference is that with Ebola, it is such a devastating disease, and there is still no cure. They're still working on vaccines. The fact of the matter with polio, there is a cure; there is a vaccine.

Believe me, I've had interviews where the person says, 'So when did you start and why? What about your parents?' I say to them, 'Please, have you heard of the word 'Google?'

There are people who are uncanny, who are finished products at a young age. I wasn't, thank God.

That makes classical music work, the ability to improvise.

Architects have to become more aware of exactly what is involved in designing barrier-free buildings and homes.

When I came to the United States, I appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show as a 13-year-old, and I played a Mendelssohn Concerto, and it sounded like a talented 13-year-old with a lot of promise. But it did not sound like a finished product.

I'm a great sports fan, you know. I love to watch tennis and basketball and baseball and so on.

When you are 8 or 9, you should have a childhood. You should have adolescence. You should go through everything in a normal way.

My oldest daughter is a pianist; she plays concerts. We play together, also.

When you play a concerto with a small orchestra, you don't feel it is as important as Carnegie Hall. You try to work out all the little problems. Once that's all done, trust comes in.