If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music].

Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.

Classical music is an unbroken, living tradition that goes back over 1,000 years, and every one of those years has had something unique and powerful to say to us about what it's like to be alive.

The big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations.

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!

Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human.

The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.

I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with some particular defining moment in human experience.

When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from time to time.

Extreme volume in music very often disguises a lack of actually important content.

One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is.

You eat the wealthy, sir, and it will be your last meal.

‎"Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights.

The results of a new study are out this week saying that New Jersey is one of the most livable states in the country. The study has a margin of error of 100 percent.

Since cancer, I feel like I have dreams rather than ambitions, visions rather than plans.

Indeed the influence of music on the development of religion is a subject which would repay a sympathetic study.

Everything begins with a decision. Then, we have to manage that decision for the rest of your life.

Hubert, a speech doesn't have to be eternal to be immortal.

If you are serious about changing your life, you are going to have to get into the Bible. You need to read it, study it, memorize it, meditate on it, and apply it.

No matter what time it is, wake me, even if it's in the middle of a Cabinet meeting.

I'm like the kid in kindergarten; I really do send valentines to everyone.