A man possesses talent; genius possesses the man.

Everywhere in the world, music enhances a hall, with one exception: Carnegie Hall enhances the music.

Mozart's music is like an X-ray of your soul - it shows what is there, and what isn't.

Music is the thousandth of a millisecond between one note and another; how you get from one to the other-that's where the music is.

There are more bad musicians than there is bad music.

Music is like making love: either all or nothing.

When you believe in something, you can move mountains.

It is only through failure and through experiment that we learn and grow.

Music is not an acquired culture... it is an active part of life.

A conductor has to know how to translate music into a communicative force that makes the listener want to hear what he has to say.

New York is the dirtiest, largest, ugliest, broken-down city in the world-but it's the only one.

If merely 'feeling good' could decide, drunkenness would be the supremely valid human experience.

When someone says you've changed, it's because you are no longer willing to live your life their way

[On being a judge for the 1986 Booker Prize:] I got to the point where I couldn't read a laundry list without considering it for the Booker Prize.

You have to want to have taste. Some people have inherently bad taste. Their problem is really not the bad taste -- that can be fixed -- but that they don't know they have it!

I don't know too many people because I stay at my house, I write songs, I go to the store.

It wasn't a healthy attitude, but it wasn't really a healthy world.

It doesn't feel like you're preaching, if you can say something in a joke.

[Asserting] important First Amendment rights ... why should [executions] be the one area that is conducted behind closed doors?... Why shouldn't executions be public?

Next year we have to be even better. If we want to be a big club this has to be one of many.

Science can tell us what exists; but to compare the worths, both of what exists and of what does not exist, we must consult not science, but what Pascal calls our heart.