Being an American musician means being adventurous.

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.

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.

Tell me about yourself - your struggles your dreams your telephone number.

Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.

I love a black wedding dress.

It is horrible, yet fascinating, this struggle between a set purpose and an utterly exhausted frame.

Events in the train of prophecy that had their fulfillment away in the past are made future, and thus by these theories the faith of some is undermined.

You've got to stand for something or you'll fall for anything.

Sometimes to win, you have to change the game.

One cannot let the events of one's past murder one's future.

I want to make another film. I want to make a better film about the legendary Babaji, with more close-encounter stories of people who have been with him.

I've got money so I'm a Conservative.