Daniel Barenboim

“US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.”

“An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.”

“We need a certain amount of energy to produce the sound. But then to sustain it, we have to give more energy, or otherwise, it goes and it dies in silence. And therefore, sound is absolutely, inextricably connected to time, the length of time.”

“Anti-Semitism has no historical, political and certainly no philosophical origins. Anti-Semitism is a disease.”

“I get no satisfaction just showing myself in every corner of the world every week.”

“I think Sharon is anti-Israeli because it's in the interest of Israel to understand the problems of the other side.”

“When you love somebody and they die young and you are young, too, it is very hard.”

“When you get to be 103, modernism is a very wide concept.”

“Once you start playing a piece, there is a connection between every note. You cannot say, 'I will not concentrate on this note.' You cannot ignore things the way you do in the rest of your life.”

“The historical importance of a composer does not always go hand in hand with the quality of their work.”

“In Arab culture, music is for celebration. You don't play music at funerals.”

“When I played my first concert with an orchestra, I was eight years old in Berlin.”

“Beethoven was a deeply political man in the broadest sense of the word. He was not interested in daily politics, but concerned with questions of moral behaviour and the larger questions of right and wrong affecting the entire society.”

“Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.”

“It is always interesting and sometimes even important to have intimate knowledge of a composer's life, but it is not essential in order to understand the composer's works.”

“Every note is a lifetime for itself.”

“I liked very much when we lived in Hampstead. We would go for walks on the Heath. I liked it better than living in the centre of town.”

“I was never really interested in an operatic post, but I took on the Bastille because it seemed a unique opportunity to build an opera ensemble from scratch, and to deal with all the disciplines that go into opera - the music, the staging and the singing - in an interrelated way.”

“In order to lift a certain object from the ground, we have to use energy. But then to sustain it at that level, we have to keep on adding energy, or otherwise, the object falls to the ground. It's exactly the same thing with the sound.”

“There is no way Israel will deal with the Palestinians if the Palestinians do not understand the suffering of the Jewish people.”