After 30 years I have realized the greatest pleasure I can get is to have learnt.

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.

There is a certain transcendent joy in creating a thing of beauty. But even more fulfilling is to become a being of beauty.

These eggs are broken. Cracked.""Yes, ma'am. That happens sometimes.""Does it?""Yes, it's the unfortunate part of being an egg.

I agree that not responding, and blocking his email, is the way to deal with the man you hope falls silent again.

Foreign policy isn't something that is great and big, it's common sense and humanity as it applies to my affairs and yours.

"On my honor" - what an ennobling phrase! Three short words, nine letters, but the summation of all we call character. From the Boy Scout's Oath.

There is no field other than the weird in which I have any aptitude or inclination for fictional composition. Life has never interested me so much as the escape from life.

The soil says, don't bring me your need, bring me your seed.

I've always been a closet jock, but when I got married and had kids, that fell by the wayside.

Most importantly, I agree that the truth of these matters should be determined by interpretation of scientific evidence - experiments, fossil studies and the like.

I fingerpick a lot because I can get more of a range of feeling from the guitar than I can when I bash away with a pick.