I get nervous before I conduct a concert, but then you just go out there and do it.

It it's true that fastidiousness and attention to detail is very much in my genes - if you knew my parents, you'd see that this is something I've inherited, only doubly so.

Concerts are dangerous because anything can happen - which is one of the joys as well.

When I lose direction, it becomes very hard to write. I actually get a physical pain, as if my subconscious knows better. That may sound mystical and pretentious, but it's true.

The London music world isn't a particularly cohesive place. And when I'm composing, I'm not very friendly. I need isolation.

You know, ” he said, “P.S.S. Piss Camp.” “Yeah, I get it, ” I said, “It’s just not funny.

Then here's to the City of Boston The town of the cries and the groans Where the Cabots can't see the Kabotschniks And the Lowells won't speak to the Cohns.

The ego wants to want more than it wants to have. And so the shallow satisfaction of having is always replaced by more wanting.

Death makes a beautiful appeal to charity. When we look upon the dead form, so composed and still, the kindness and the love that are in us all come forth.

I was a better writer when I was teaching. I was constantly going over the basics and constantly reminding myself, as I reminded my students, what made a good story, a good poem.

I moved to New York from California when I was 11, so initially I was seen as the California person for a while. I didn't feel like I was popular, but I did feel confident.

Poetry is superior to painting in the presentation of words, and painting is superior to poetry in the presentation of facts. For this reason I judge painting to be superior to poetry.

You grow weary of being treated as the enemy simply because you are not young anymore; because you dress unexceptionally.

So many of my family and friends had lost their battles against cancer. What could I do that my relatives and friends had not? What could I do that would be different?

The faster you can sample sound when you are digitizing it, the higher the frequency, the less phase ambiguity at the higher frequencies.