Top 142 Quotes & Sayings by Joshua Bell

So much of performing is a mind game.

Over the years, I've collected a lot of musical friends.

When you hear extraneous noise, they are bored in some way, so it makes me upset. Even coughing, I find, is passive-aggressive, usually.

You're a constant student, as a musician.

I write arrangements. I'm sort of a wannabe composer.

The violin sings.

I love the outdoor festival feeling.

I learned early on how to make best use of my time. You know, quality is more important than quantity when it comes to practice time. And unfortunately, I still need to practice a lot.

I'm addicted to the adrenaline of performing, and I think when you're used to having that high, you look for it in other things.

I like blackjack. I like the psychology of poker.

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.

As far as doing TV, I do think there's a big audience out there that could enjoy classical music, but they don't know how to find it, and sometimes by doing different things... crossover things probably make up about 5% of what I do.

I never had any real expectations about what sort of success I would have or all the publicity.

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

Beethoven's symphonies are not 'relaxing.' They are the most exciting things that have ever been created by a human being.

In art and music, particularly in the 20th century, there was a big period there where for something to be called profound you had to not be able to understand it.

I hope I will always have the chance to play the violin.

I like trying things, I am kind of adventurous and I like thrill seeking.

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

Everyone's definition of what God means can vary. But music is something that really takes you to that - 'sublime' is a great word. That thing that is greater than we are. The beauty, the magic of the universe.

I'm in a position where, theoretically, I could play the same ten concertos and make a very good living bouncing around playing Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky and Barber, but I really think artists should keep pushing limits and trying new things.

The orchestra confides in me about their music director or their conductor, and I've never seen a conductor that's been liked by everyone.

Stradivarius, in particular, was the most amazing craftsman and one of the great artists and scientists that ever lived because he figured out something with the sound and the science of acoustics that we still don't understand it completely.

The best way to refine an interpretation is by getting out and performing.

I use Facebook quite a lot to keep up with my friends, although I had to delete 'Words With Friends' from my phone because it was wasting too much of my time.

We live in a very chaotic world that sometimes we - it just seems like a mess. One of the reasons why we listen to music, and to great classical music in particular, is that everything is in an order and in a place and has a beauty that you see in nature, that you see and that people look for when they look for God.

No one tells you what to do if you completely flop at the beginning of a performance.

The man on the street, he knows who Beethoven is, he knows who Mozart is.

When you play for ticket-holders, you are already validated. I have no sense that I need to be accepted. I'm already accepted.

Being a director or a conductor is a balance of many things. And to do it right is a very difficult tightrope to walk. I've come to the conclusion that there's really no way to be one hundred percent popular as conductor.

We live in the least ugly time in history.

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 don't have to have lots of love affairs to know what love is.

There's nothing more frustrating than seeing a conductor say, 'Play softer,' as they're waving their hands in huge gestures.

I was lucky enough to have parents who started me on music very early, but most kids don't get that kind of exposure.

I hate YouTube sometimes because people put up things of mine that were never meant for consumption and also because of some of the comments people write about my videos.

Although I hardly ever turn on the TV set unless it's football season, I do watch a lot of TV on my iPad - perfect for long airplane journeys.

I want to do everything. That's my problem.

I think, as an artist, it's very important to continue to be challenged and feel challenged all the time.

Conducting is a strange thing to teach.

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

Someone who directs a film, they have to see the overall picture, and they have to get the best performances out of the actors.

Obviously, I want it to be legally downloaded, and I myself have spent a fortune on iTunes because, for me, that's the easiest way to get music.

So much of performing is a mind game. You're memorizing thousands of notes, and if you start thinking about it in the wrong way, everything can blow up in your face.

Good conductors know when to let an orchestra lead itself. Ninety percent of what a conductor does comes in the rehearsal - the vision, the structure, the architecture.

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.

I mean, 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.

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

I think it's really important to always kind of stretch your boundaries and your limits and get out of your comfort zone. And for me, that's very important.

At a music hall, I'll get upset if someone coughs or if someone's cellphone goes off.

Beethoven's fourth and seventh symphonies have a certain amount in common. Well, of course they're both written by Beethoven, but besides that, I would say their overall effect and idea is to provide the listener with an incredible sense of joy.

What drew me to the violin was mastering the instrument technically, which I'm continuing to do.

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

I like working with kids because I enjoy seeing the looks on their faces and, it's kind of selfish, I want a future audience.

Anyone who knows classical music and loves classical music has heard the Beethoven Seventh hundreds of times probably in their life.

When you play a violin piece, you are a storyteller, and you're telling a story.

I happen to love Saint-Saens in general. I think he's a brilliant composer and sometimes underrated in a way because people like to pass him off as fluffy and not being serious.

It's interesting about classical music that the more you hear something, the more you get to know a piece, the better and better it gets, period, which is just an interesting thing on it.

I grew up in a musical family, but nobody was a professional musician.

I'm having a blast being the music director at the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields. It certainly is challenging for me, but I love challenges.