I wanted to be a monk at some time in my life, or a priest, so there was a kind of reflex quite early on not to be attached to anything that might be taken away.
Most people are at a concert because they want to be inspired, entertained, moved; we musicians have the mission to be bringers of joy, of ecstasy.
The piano is an instrument that can easily sound overly thick, and I love to think that I can work with textures - particularly the inner textures inside the melody or the bass line. There is an analogy there with painting; I love paintings where you see colour underneath the colour and, underneath that, more texture and shape.
I didn't want to look back in 10 or 20 years and say, 'Yes, I always wanted to write that piano sonata or that novel, but I never had time.'
I'd never thought about living in London until about 1999.
If you are not living in the same area when you are looking for property, it is a nightmare because you come down for a day or two, have appointments to see places, and have to be able to make instant decisions before flying off to St. Louis or somewhere.
I've always written - about music, art, things going on around the world. The danger is that it becomes too personal. I don't think people want it at that level of intimacy.
I wanted to be a disc jockey.
I like the extras in life. Concentrating on serious things doesn't mean you can't also enjoy the lighter ones.
There are many doors to the heart.
I love my painting - it fills me with passion. But it's not something I expect anyone else to love.
I can admire music where you feel the composer has everything organized and perfectly shaped, but it doesn't touch me. I like to feel that a composer is wounded, like all of us.
Traveling the road can be quite tiresome.
It's so easy for all the success in the world to suddenly end, and I'm quite aware of that.
Once or twice, I've taken the Gideon Bible out of the drawer, opened it at random, and found myself stuck in the middle of a genealogical list. And that's when I thought: why not cherry-pick the best bits, passages that people can actually use?
To me, the heart of the ministry lies in being able to help deeply distressed people, not because of your own qualities but because you represent Christ.
I once nodded off during one of my own concerts. While I was playing.
All things of beauty can speak to us of God, and I'm very happy to listen to and be inspired by people of every religious background.
Schubert, Franck, and Liszt were all Roman Catholics who questioned or doubted or lived in different ways, and religion was certainly part of all their lives.
Debussy is one of the few composers who actually created a new sound on the piano - or perhaps we should say a new smell, so perfumed are the vibrations which emanate from the instrument.
