From Toscanini I learnt the essential and desperate seriousness of making music.

Mozart makes you believe in God because it cannot be by chance that such a phenomenon arrives into this world and leaves such an unbounded number of unparalleled masterpieces.

The joy of working with the Chicago Symphony was immeasureable.

Fight the tendency to become complacent and do one kind of music - that is the death of a musician.

Everyone says you have to be a specialist, and if you conduct Wagner you cannot conduct Mozart - this is nonsense.

The academy gave me a grounding in discipline and hard work that has sustained me throughout my life, and the lessons I learned there I now try to impress on young people.

I wanted to get away from my past and everything connected with it.

The experience awakened 'my tremendous musical ambition, which has never subsided to this day.

I would never have become music director of the Chicago Symphony, which would have been an extremely sad loss.

My entire learning process is slow, because I have no visual memory.

Between the two men, somewhere, a truth is lying, and that is what I try to find.

Be creative enough to dream, brave enough to try, persistent enough to succeed, and humble enough to thank those who helped you along the way.

All work is the avoidance of harder work.

Purchasing a large and expensive home during a real estate boom turned into the biggest financial mistake that I ever made.

It's all about music, because music is basically what's... been my avenue out of maybe being involved in things I shouldn't be.

Our cause is just, and the might of Korea that is united with truth is infinite.

Gehrig had one advantage over me. He was a better ballplayer.

The one who is happy, that's the one who is right.

Keeping score of old scores and scars, getting even and one-upping, always makes you less than you are.

LSD is different. LSD is like psychoanalytical Drano. It's not a personality.

I always go through different phases of how I write and record. It takes me a long time to kind of conceptualize what feels right.