Andre Rieu

I am travelling half the year around the world, every year, so coming home is one of the most beautiful things.

It is my personality alone that has brought back the waltz and made it a global craze.

I have 120 people in my payroll without any government giving me any money. We live off the tickets and the records I sell. That is very unusual.

I was so busy with my studies that I didn't have a musical idol as a teenager. Later, around my 20s, I suddenly discovered the Beatles and the Rolling Stones but I guess my musical idol has always been Strauss.

Critics or musicians who attack me are jealous of my success and the fact that I make people feel so happy.

People don't come to my concerts because they know the program. They come because they love the atmosphere and because they know that when I offer them a program it will be a night they never forget.

When I'm not on tour, I love to have a long breakfast at home in my garden.

I love reading but I never last very long because I fall asleep right away.

We should make decisions in life with our hearts, not our brains, not only in music but in daily life.

I was a fat child and loved cake, perhaps because it was the only sweet thing in my life.

When my twin grandchildren, Linda and Lyeke, were born two years ago, it changed me. I felt it was the essence of what life is about, and I cried all day. When my son Pierre, their father, was born I didn't cry like that.

The waltz can be sad and at the same time uplifting. You have to see life from both sides, and the waltz encapsulates that. If you're in my audience you give yourself to me and the waltz will grab you.