I guess, as a conductor, one goes in and out of fashion. Your career starts with a bang, everyone thinks you're wonderful, and then with middle age, something happens and you go into the wilderness.

The most perfect expression of human behavior is a string quartet.

Basically speaking, conducting is quite a healthy profession.

I was told when I went for a life-insurance exam when I was 18 that I was not likely to live past 50, so I refused to pay the premium.

So I observe life a little bit, rather than participating in it.

I had a sense of debt to the medical profession and to surgery particularly. I would not be as ambient as I am without it.

If a man is experiencing many trials, God often gives him a vision through dreams to strengthen his spirit

Yes, the wind came up--" Mrs. Sharpe began. She paused."And changed us all, " Petra said softly.

"Honesty" without compassion and understanding is not honesty but subtle hostility.

Dinted dimpled wimpled-his mind wandered down echoing corridors of assonance and alliteration ever further and further from the point. He was enamoured with the beauty of words.

There was a young lady named Mae Who smoked without stopping all day; As pack followed pack, Her lungs first turned black, And eventually rotted away.

So near along life's stream are the fountains of innocence and youth making fertile its sandy margin; and the voyageur will do well to replenish his vessels often at these uncontaminated sources.

Let's give discredit where discredit is due.

You'll never know that you had all of me. You'll never know the poetry you've stirred in me.

You might lose your spontaneity and, instead of composing first-rate Gershwin, end up with second rate Ravel.

No bird in a cage ever speaks. What is there to say? The sky is everywhere, churning above its head, blue and endless, calling out to it. But the caged bird can't answer anything except 'I cannot'.