Composers are not all good conductors.

It is simple nonsense to speak of the fixed tempo of any particular vocal phrase. Each voice has its peculiarities.

The ability to conduct is a gift of God with which few have been endowed in full measure.

The composers could no longer direct all performances in person, and so the responsibility of interpreting their works in the spirit in which they had been conceived was placed upon conductors.

Musical practice is too young an art in America to warrant a search for men with a conductor's gift.

Conducting! A subject, truly, concerning which much might be written, yet scarcely anything of real importance is to be found in books.

The conductor's gift does not always go hand in hand with that of composition; indeed, the union is found much more seldom than is popularly believed.

Of course, experience strengthens one later.

I'd much rather fall to my death than admit my weakness to you.""The captain of the Royal Guard wants to impress a lowly handmaiden?""A clumsy young man wants to impress a beautiful young woman.

Your daily choices and actions should be rational and productive

You'll never be completely sure about the first move, but do it anyway.

An act of kindness is uplifting to the soul.

JFK to RFK: To survive in politics, you sometimes have to be willing to make fun of yourself.

President Bush is going to establish elections there in Iraq. He's going to rebuild the infrastructure. He's going to create jobs. He said if it works there, he'll try it here.

There's something about watching an animal that puts you in contact with where we came from and what we're still a part of.

I love kale. I bake it. I sauté it. I juice it. I massage it. I want other people to join the cult-of- kale.

Art bids us touch and taste and hear and see the world, and shrinks from what Blake calls mathematic form, from every abstract form, from all that is of the brain only.

A rare theorist turned experimentalist.