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

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.

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.

The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.

He who is afraid of suffering, is already suffering fear. Out of fear, true creativity is blocked.

If there is any way for that man to do the job wrong, he'll do it that way.

The silence that makes it possible to hear God speak also makes it possible for us to hear the world's words for what they really are - tinny and unconvincing lies.

I've got two Rolexes that I'm very proud of - a gold Presidential that was a gift and a white gold one I gifted myself. I'm trying to step my game up and get a few more of those.

For if anything is capable of making a poet of a literary man, it is my hometown love of the human, the living and ordinary.

It is more rewarding to resolve a conflict than to dissolve a relationship.

There's no original evil left in the world. Everyone's just recycling pain. (257)

I think that if there was one mistake that I took away, it would affect the man that I am today.

Reticence may be an elderly doctrine to preach, yet from the artistic point of view I am sure it is a sound one. Reticence conduces to effect, blatancy ruins it.

The current system punishes communities which make the investment in creating landfills, only to have them filled by states which refuse to adequately address their waste issues.