An amazing gift in a young child is, in some ways, an abnormality.

I met my wife in music camp. She's got great ears, and we have a relationship where she's not afraid to tell me anything. If something's going on in my playing, she will tell me about it, and that's very, very important.

I am an eternal optimist. I always say 'Yihyeh Tov' or 'It'll get better.'

When I was growing up in Israel, Cantorial music was something I heard over and over on the radio, so it wasn't at all strange to me. I was very familiar with the music.

'Kol Nidrei' is probably the most important prayer in the Jewish religion. It comes on the evening of Yom Kippur. There are so many different renditions of it.

My message is that giving is very important. Giving is a Jewish thing, and I like to talk about that. There's nothing more important, personally, for anybody than being able to give.

Israel is the country of my birth. When I come here, I feel I'm coming home.

Teaching is really very, very important. I always tell my students that you should find an opportunity to teach. When you teach others, you teach yourself.

The danger in playing a piece over and over again lies in getting stuck in a rut where you don't ask questions anymore and you always play it the same way.

I am humbled and honored to receive the Genesis Prize, recognizing not just my professional achievements and my desire to improve the world, but also my commitment to my Jewish identity, Jewish values, and Jewish culture.

My experience with the Detroit Symphony has been musically very satisfying. They have a wonderful sound, which for me is one of the most important qualities in an orchestra.

Access Living is a powerful voice for people in the Chicago area who live with disabilities.

The arts are part of the fiber of American society and should get Federal support.

Architects have to become more aware of exactly what is involved in designing barrier-free buildings and homes.

As for minimalism, I don't care, don't care, don't care to repeat myself, repeat myself.

It is good medicine to go to a concert hall and forget the harshness of what's going on. It can be a very positive thing.

Brahms is one of my all-time favorite composers.

Whenever I play recitals, the part where I talk about music and my experiences of music, audiences always like it. They feel more involved with an artist who talks to them. It's a nice experience for me as well.

I say to string players in small chamber orchestras, 'it's always easy to become a passenger on the journey in sound, just adding volume to the whole. But if you play in an individual way, it makes the difference between good and great sound in an orchestra.'

If you put four different people on a podium conducting the same downbeat, you get four different sounds. It's a little mysterious and fascinating. There's so much you can do with motions and body movements besides giving accurate beats.

The 'Mozart Symphony No. 27' is an early composition. I find it charming.

Everybody's saying, you know, 'You're so heroic and so on despite of the polio that you had and so on.' Look, I had polio when I was four. So when you're four years old, you know, you get used to things very, very quickly.

The thing is that I always consider myself lucky that I can actually cry listening to some music.

If you put your hand on the piano, you play a note. It's in tune. But if you put it on the violin, maybe it is, maybe it isn't. You have to figure it out.

Every wish, every dream, every idea comes to existence only through blood, sweat and sacrifice.

If you dwell on yesterday, man, you're never gonna see tomorrow clearly.

Anyone in recovery knows that isolation is the biggest enemy.

When I decided to get sober, there were a lot of chemical imbalances that came along with that, physically as well as mentally.

For me, I feed off everything, from bad politics to religion to relationships - I mean, just life in general. And, yeah, I'm not necessarily happy with the state of things. And I think that I get to use music as a release.

I just got to a point where I was lying to myself constantly, so I had to face up to that. It was a lot of... I don't want to use the words 'self sacrifice,' but that's what it felt like. It was giving up who I thought I was and starting over from scratch and realizing the man that I am was good enough.

I just try to keep myself positive and really active.

You know, I mean, we're all made to wear these faces, you know, of what we think society would want.

Our fans understand us because of who we are.

Playing for the troops is always an honor and seriously humbling.

I've never really been a social butterfly, so to speak.

Most of us weren't born with a silver spoon in our mouth, but if life dealt you all the wrong cards, you still have to play.

I use throat sprays on stage, but most of the throat sprays I was using had alcohol or other carcinogens in them, stuff I wanted to keep away from myself. So I started making a recipe for my own throat spray that was more of a natural approach to everything.

Myself, I usually wait until I get home to write. While we're touring, I try to stay as focused as possible on the moment at hand because I feel like I'll be robbing the fans if I don't.

I've never played instruments. I've always been a singer or a writer, for that matter. But I started playing in bands when I was sixteen years old.

The Ghost Machine album was actually written when I was going through spiritual depression, as that was written right after Motograter and just prior to Five Finger Death Punch.

It's taken a lot for me to understand that the position I'm in is meant to benefit other people.

You know, we love what we do, man, and I don't want to be one of those bands that we write an album, tour for two years and then take a year and a half off.

It's really sad sometimes that you have to go to that extreme bottom to find your way back up, but it's true.

I've got nice cars.

I've never done what anybody told me to.

Oh my God - if you wanna look up to somebody in this industry, start with Korn. That's my opinion.

We've never tried to be anybody else but Five Finger Death Punch.

There were millions of people who could've given up on me at any given moment, and they didn't, and so that, to me, it's the world and more.

You go check out someone like Rammstein, man, and it changes your life.

I would not change my career to be a pro athlete. A team could trade me and my band cannot!