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.

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.

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].

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.

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.

An average man is egoistic, proud and has strong self esteem. They always require partners who massage their ego not those who will drag their ego to the mud.

Young hearts have their unfathomable depths.

It’s not the application that is stopping people from using timeless knowledge passed on to us, it’s the acknowledging part.

I am a Catholic. Basically, the Catholic religion is 'If it feels good - stop.'

Evolution is unproved and unprovable. We believe it only because the only alternative is special creation, and that is unthinkable.

All friendship is desirable in itself, though it starts from the need of help

The race car is harder to drive. If there was an in-car camera that could have watched me saw on that wheel for 500 laps, there wasn't one time I could relax.

Behind the masks of total choice, different forms of the same alienation confront each other.

Genetics is crude, but neuroscience goes directly to work on the brain, and the mind follows.

One thing must be granted to the rich: they are goodnatured.