I just really don't like being the center of attention that much. It's kind of ironic.
I came to Moscow when I was 5 years old from Baku. To walk all night in Moscow will bring back my youth to me.
You must play for the love of music. Perfect technique is not as important as making music from the heart.
The artist must forget the audience, forget the critics, forget the technique, forget everything but love for the music. Then, the music speaks through the performance, and the performer and the listener will walk together with the soul of the composer, and with God.
When I started learning the cello, I fell in love with the instrument because it seemed like a voice - my voice.
There is too much emphasis on technical perfection nowadays, and not enough on what music is actually about - irony, joy, human suffering, love.
All my life I wanted to play music with love to every member of the audience.
Bullshit, as you Americans say. He's Irish. The Irish say bullshit too.
For books [Charles Darwin] had no respect, but merely considered them as tools to be worked with. . . . he would cut a heavy book in half, to make it more convenient to hold. He used to boast that he had made Lyell publish the second edition of one of his books in two volumes, instead of in one, by telling him how ho had been obliged to cut it in half. . . . his library was not ornamental, but was striking from being so evidently a working collection of books.
Truth seldom is pleasant; it is almost invariably bitter.
In the financial sector, those whom the gods want to destroy they first teach math.