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.

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.

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.

One of my central maxims is how a major part of what a conductor tries to do is get a large group of people to agree on where "now" actually is.

Because I lay with him… I’ve caught a glimpse of heaven. Or I understand what I need. Or I have the courage to be myself.

If we believe in what God made and what God said, we will believe in the One whom God sent.

Is there a reason you look like you want to murder me?""Not particularly. You have that effect on people.

After all, I was dressed in linen and so retained a certain capacity for nonchalance.

Whatever is on your plate got there because you said yes to it.

I really love the karate thing I did on CHIPs. I studied with a trainer because I knew we'd do episodes that had karate.

If we are to cherish freedom, and to guard it, we must remember what the alternative is: the bread of affliction and the bitter herbs of slavery.

Pay your people the least possible and you'll get from them the same.

To love a fool is a misfortune, but does not make one a fool.

The best moment of love is when the lover leaves in the taxi.