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

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.

I had a very simple, unremarkable and happy life. And I grew up in a very small town. And so my life was made up of, you know, in the morning going to the river to fetch water - no tap water, and no electricity - and, you know, bathing in the river, and then going to school, and playing soccer afterwards.

The purpose - where I start - is the idea of use. It is not recycling, it's reuse.

I have warned many times about the guaranteed dangers of betting with your heart instead of your head - big darkness, soon come - but every once in a while you get a fair chance to have it both ways, and the annual NCAA basketball Tournament is one of them.

As an entrepreneur, the pressures of a startup can be enormous, but it's rarely life or death.

My perfect guy wears converse, is totally laid back, and doesn't worry about being cool.

I've always known what I've wanted, but I used to be shy about expressing that in regards to my career. So I've become a lioness. If something's happening that I don't necessarily feel comfortable about, I will speak my mind. Or if I want to do something, I go for it.

I love the storm and fear the calm.

Style is joyful if you allow yourself to have joy.

There is a difference between a book of two hundred pages from the very beginning, and a book of two hundred pages which is the result of an original eight hundred pages. The six hundred are there. Only you don't see them.

Harmonies are nice.

A comic book and a straight drama all have the same elements. If you're playing tragedy, you have to be aware of the comedy; if you're playing comedy, you have to be aware of the tragedy. If you're playing comic book, you have to be aware of the reality.

We will never stop illegal immigration until this country has a comprehensive, realistic immigration policy.

I've seen 48 Stanley Cups in my life. I was about six or seven when I started going to games with my dad.

In February 1969, 25 years ago, I arrived as a young, terrified PFC on this lonely little hill in Quang Ngai Province. Back then, the place seemed huge and imposing and permanent.

To love is nothing. To be loved is something. But to love and be loved, that's everything.

I was the only kid out of six of us to go to college, primarily because my parents could not afford it.

As a producer, I'm trying to challenge myself to just make something that is of a professional quality - not necessarily pop music, but maybe in the sense that Nine Inch Nails is professional quality.

Many gloat over their own troubles.

The sound of tireless voices is the price we pay for the right to hear the music of our own opinions.

I prefer men to boys. To clear it up, it's not about an older or younger thing. It's a mindset, not age. There are 18-year-old men out there and there are 40-year-old boys.

The lake at Neverland is right in the very front, and you just want to dive in.

In the '60s, my father, Wally Amos, had been a talent agent and a personal manager before taking a major career detour in 1975, when he opened a store selling chocolate chip cookies.

I just hope that I continue to keep a line between my private life and who I play, even if they are closely intertwined, and so I'm careful. I don't even know where my line is, but I know I have a line.

Well, I believe in the idea of 'normal' in the way that I believe in the idea of logic. Or the idea of character. All of these ethical constructs are just that: constructs.