Everybody makes his path differently.

The stage is close to being in the middle of the hall, so that the performers are surrounded by the listeners. I feel that we are all experiencing the music together.

We should welcome applause whenever it comes.

Everyone is different. Sometimes it's very exciting; sometimes very scary.

We seem to have set up some very arcane rules as to when it is actually OK to applaud.

Applause should be an emotional response to the music, rather than a regulated social duty.

All of us love applause, and so we should - it means that the listener likes us!

Everybody makes his path differently.

I have always thought that my ear is also very influenced by my eyes.

A lot of it just has to do with luck, serendipity.

It is wonderful to see how happy all my friends in the LA Philharmonic are in their new home.

If there were no rules about when to applaud, we in the audience would have the right response almost always.

Pianists don't argue too much generally because we have such a hard time just getting things right; arguing is for string players.

The sheer force of the music calls for a wild audience reaction.

Sometimes I wish that applause would come just a bit later, when it is so beautifully hushed that I feel like holding my breath in the silence of the end.

I usually only play with very close friends.

I have been coming to Los Angeles since 1975 to perform.

I have been trying to find out exactly when listeners and performers decided that applause between movements would not be allowed, but nobody seems to have been willing to admit that they were the culprit.

How wonderful it is to play with someone you feel very close to.

Even if you don't like a concert of mine, please, please applaud at the end anyway.

If the audience walks out of a concert thinking, What a wonderful experience, then we have done our job.

Mozart often wrote to his family that certain variations or sections of pieces were so successful that they had to be encored immediately, even without waiting for the entire piece to end.

If the audience walks out of a concert thinking What a wonderful experience then we have done our job.

To live in the midst of suffering, which we do, we do, amid distress, and to keep some equilibrium in the midst of that - that would be happiness enough.

And that means that no matter how we reform health care, we will keep this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.

For some in Washington, it's become sport to pick on the federal workforce. I think they do so unjustly. The very foundation of a stable America is having a government that functions well. Many countries have dysfunctional governments, because they don't have a good government workforce.

I do better on the first three takes; I won't be better at 20 takes.

New York was an inexhaustible space, a labyrinth of endless steps, and no matter how far he walked, no matter how well he came to know its neighborhoods and streets, it always left him with the feeling of being lost.

I think confrontation is healthy, because it clears the air very quickly.

I'm not really a pick-up-line guy. I don't know what I do.

I won't do 'Strictly' or any of those ghastly reality programmes. 'I'm a Celebrity' would be the end. It makes me shudder.

Remember that you are needed. There is at least one important work to be done that will not be done unless you do it.

Senator Martinez is not driven by polls; he is driven by the needs of the state of Florida and its 17 million constituents.

I love the past. There are parts of the past I hate, of course.

The examples of the Obama Administration 'stimulating' jobs everywhere on the planet except here in America are endless.

If you're at a restaurant and someone asks, 'Fresh pepper?,' the answer is yes. When people shake off the fresh pepper, they clearly have no interest in living a full life. Same thing goes for grated Parmesan. Why would you turn that down?

Volunteering is so pervasive it's invisible. We take for granted all the things that have been pioneered by concerned, active volunteers.

Flexible supply chains are great for multinationals and consumers. But they erode already thin profit margins in developing-world factories and foster a pell-mell work environment in which getting the order out the door is the only thing that matters.

If you're not really having a good time, it's not worth it.

So the idea that you could put Kurds, Shiite Arabs, and Sunni Arabs in a nice, liberal, federal system in Iraq in a short amount of time, six months or a year, boggles the mind.

We're pretty insane about art direction.

I think I've always had a 40-year-old body, and now that I'm actually there I'm like, 'Hey, pretty good, huh?'

Let us give publicity to HIV/AIDS and not hide it, because [that is] the only way to make it appear like a normal illness.

God is not a doormat nor should anyone else be a doormat.

America is so vast that almost everything said about it is likely to be true, and the opposite is probably equally true.

I discovered 'The Shield' back around 2010, when the Archie superheroes were licensed to DC Comics. From there, I went back into the archives and discovered this whole universe of characters, and I was hooked.

I work out a lot, but I like to do action sports. A lot of surfing, mountain-biking.