Quotes from Hilary Hahn

It struck me that it would be fun to just play stuff with Hauschka. Not even have a project in mind, but just get together and make up some music and see what came out.

I have a lot of interests. I daydreamed about various career options growing up; the one I'm in is the first one that worked out, and I love it, so I feel very lucky.

I feel like I had as normal a childhood as anyone, but it had a certain focus. Maybe other kids focused on sports.

When you have live music in the background, people are usually talking over it. You don't actually get to listen to live music in your space all the time.

Touring is a more varied and interesting existence than I would have imagined.

Growing up as a classical musician, you're taught a lot about outreach and about how people aren't being taught music in school. But you don't have to study music to like it. And a lot of the music that people like - be it jazz or rock or opera - is stuff they haven't studied.

I enjoy reading and thinking, and it's hard to make that space as an artist.

Bach in general was so good with the violin. He just finds the genius way around his music on the instrument.

I never felt like a prodigy. For one thing, the root of the word is rather monstrous, literally. I never really felt like a monster or anything abnormal, because I always had a lot of different interests. But kids tend to focus on one thing, and for me it was violin.

Kids would come up to me after concerts and give me drawings they've made of violins or, you know, landscapes with a violin floating in it or some sketch of a concert or a portrait of me.

Most kids are very seriously interested in something - friends, math, shopping, sports. For me it happened to be music and the violin. I had the chance to pursue it without having it get in the way of my life.

The violin didn't keep me from doing things I wanted to do.

Edgar Meyer's violin concerto was the first piece of contemporary music I worked on in any depth. I was 18 or 19.

Sometimes if the point of a piece of music is to open a conversation with other people, it's really hard to open that conversation if you're telling people exactly what to do or feel or think.

I always feel I have a long way to go in my playing and my music.