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

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.

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.

I can only hope that neither of them was scarred by their upbringing.

Empowering women isn’t just the right thing to do - it’s the smart thing to do.

Is it possible to be a revolutionary and like flowers?

Peter Townsend Music is the silence between the notes.. So could it be said that dance is the stillness between the steps?

The two greatest mannequins of the century were Gertrude Stein and Edith Sitwell - unquestionably. You just couldn't take a bad picture of those two old girls

I've always felt there are two things a woman should never do after the age of thirty-five: stand in natural light and have a baby.

But the way I see it, dying without knowing love would be a tragedy.

Nothing is more pleasant than to see a pretty woman, her napkin well placed under her arms, one of her hands on the table, while the other carries to her mouth, the choice piece so elegantly carved.

When it comes to the fundamental issues that humanity faces, I think that solutions involve shifting consciousness towards cooperation.

Thy tongue Makes Welsh as sweet as ditties highly penn'd, Sung by a fair queen in a summer's bower, With ravishing division, to her lute.

It's a miserable life in Hollywood. You're up at five or six o'clock in the morning to be ready to start shooting at nine.