“True joy is to take pleasurein one's own accomplishments....”

“I have decided to escape, to defy the shogun. Today I will begin walking the road to hell. But you will choose your own path. So, soon you may be seeing heaven. Choose the sword, and you will join me. Choose the ball and you join your mother, in death. You don’t understand my words, but you must choose. So… come boy, choose life or death.”

“A father knows his child's heart, as only a child can know his fathers.”

“As with a wound on one's own body, it is possible to develop an intimacy with the most disturbing of things”

“Sometimes I get so immersed in my own company, if I unexpectedly run into someone I know, it's a bit of a shock and takes me a while to adjust.”

“But you play that passage like it's the -memory- of love. You're so young, yet you know desertion, abandonment. That's why you play that third movement the way you do. Most cellists, they play it with joy. But for you, it's not about joy, it's about the memory of a joyful time that's gone for ever.”

“I can't even say I made my own mistakes. Really - one has to ask oneself - what dignity is there in that?”