Vanessa Mae Quotes

The stage is the best experience in the world. It's a great compliment to be able to share the music, because people can hear my album but they don't get to make the connection in the same way as when it's one-to-one.

Violin playing is a physical art with great traditions behind it.

I've decided to make my main priority for the next two years not playing the violin, but training for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

In an ideal world, I'd spend every weekend at my home in Zermatt in Switzerland.

Music will always be my greatest passion.

Music is about the performance.

To even get to the Olympics, I have to qualify for the 2013 World Championships and the standard is high. I know I am always going to be a few points behind the top guys.

When I hit my 20s, I took a chill pill and relaxed because throughout my teens I was churning out an album a year. It was a treadmill of work then recording, promoting and touring.

All the time I'm changing as an artist and as a person.

But I don't think I've grown up to be a damaged adult.

People find it hard to understand how I can risk ruining my career as a musician by injuring myself on the slopes, but I've always been a tomboy.

I don't mind about the boos from the audience.

For example, I loved English and history at school. I would have loved to have done a degree in either. But my Mom said I didn't have time for university.

In winter I go skiing on Saturdays and Sundays when the slopes are quieter due to changeover day for tourists, and in summer I hike up into the mountains at sunset, just as the village is settling down to dinner.

I started skiing around the same time as I began playing the piano, at around four, before moving to the violin at five.

But then I hit my 20s and only made two albums, and now I live in a ski resort as a ski bum basically.