I can't imagine how many first performances I've done, perhaps 500. Some of them have been very good, and some of course very bad.

Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course.

There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.

Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.

As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign.

The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

He was stretched out like he was her own personal playground and she wanted to ride on his equipment for a bit longer.

The sea never dries for it has so many friend

Reassuring thoughts have a funny way of getting stuck on repeat. Then you wake up one day and you can't remember where you put the last thirty years of your life.

I want to be a guileless rook to discolor the blackness of all crafty human hearts

In the end we will realise that we only came to earth to love

For anybody that works in any kind of demining or any kind of humanitarian aid work, there is danger and it's always a high-risk area [in Cambodia].

Art is really about how you capture different things you see around you and bring them into forms and words and shapes and meaning.

Baby, your nothing but too much trouble. Gotta bury this love and bury the shovel.

Do not sit down in Satan's easy chair of do-little, but arise and aim at the elevated standard which it is your privilege to attain.

I am not too serious about anything. I believe you have to enjoy yourself to get the most out of your ability. I can take the criticism with the accolades. Neither affects me.