Joshua Bell

“I'm not a businessman, so I don't know how to solve the problems of the recording industry.”

“Music - you need the give and take from the audience, the feeling of attention. It's not about me: it's about the music itself.”

“I don't want to portray myself as a daredevil. I'm not at all.”

“I associate music with fun and joy.”

“My teacher, Josef Gingold, a student of the French school, always loved the music of Saint-Saens and Henri Vieuxtemps and all the French repertoire.”

“You're a constant student, as a musician.”

“I know how to deal with jet lag, and I know just how much rest I need and when I need to take naps. When you walk on stage, you need your brain working at its highest and most fully-functioning, so it's not always easy, but I sort of figure it out.”

“A conductor can do wild things which can feel forced, but if you're directing from within the orchestra, you can't do that, things have to feel natural.”

“I think you can appreciate different interpretations. Art is not a contest. I can even appreciate hearing someone play something in a way that I wouldn't.”

“You're really looking for the truth of what the piece is about. And that's going to be different for different people.”

“You might think that after 40 years of practice you wouldn't need to practice anymore, but sadly it doesn't work that way. You still have to keep chugging away and perfecting.”

“When I hear people clapping at the wrong times, I think that's great. We have got a listener that's not used to going to - we have got a new listener.”

“It's very hard to find a pianist that's willing to play the so-called accompanist role on part of the program and yet be capable of being a great solo pianist that you would want for the big sonatas.”

“My father was - actually was an Episcopal priest as a young man. Became a psychotherapist, a psychologist. My mother is Jewish, so I grew up in a mixed background. But the common denominator was certainly music, and that was sort of emphasized in my household as music being sort of the spiritual force.”

“The beauty of a Stradivarius is that you can play in Carnegie Hall without any amplification, and it has this - the sound has, inside it, has something that projects, and it has multifaceted sound, something that kind of gets lost when you use amplification anyway.”

“For some reason I can't explain, artist and musicians tend to look younger than our age. Being in music, you need this youthful sense of discovery and wonder for what you're doing and keep your imagination open. That's a youthful way of looking at life and I think that reflects in how you age.”

“You only live once, so I try to say yes to everything.”

“I started directing chamber orchestras, then adding bigger pieces, adding winds, adding small symphonies. I've always loved chamber music, and I've done a lot.”

“I'm happy if my music is being downloaded, whether it's legally or illegally.”

“The great secret is that an orchestra can actually play without a conductor at all. Of course, a great conductor will have a concept and will help them play together and unify them. But there are conductors that actually inhibit the players from playing with each other properly.”