I wouldn't say I've changed my mind. I changed some of my natural habits, some of my natural character.

Even my family laughed at me because they thought this young guy who's always stuttering in front of other people should be in front of 100 musicians and talk to them and leading them.

An orchestra full of stars can be a disaster.

If every school would hire two more music teachers, we would need two fewer police officers.

Young conductors who are confident enough, they very often have success.

Sometimes if you have very confident people, you have to tell them please, be polite, there are other players are good enough as you and you should never speak out of an orchestra.

I always imagined that to bring an orchestra to play together is not enough for a conductor.

And if you are strong enough, then you can grow as a conductor more and more.

What I never overcame is a kind of shyness.

I was different from most young conductors today.

And at the same time, I had my very first concert at the age of 16. I hadn't heard a symphony orchestra before, and I was so deeply impressed I said I have to be a conductor.

Search yourself with other persons and you will find the right you.

I have been too young to know, and I have been too old to care. It’s in that oh so narrow slice between that memories are made.

The many fail: the one succeeds.

He who cannot resist temptation is not a man.

This knight was indeed a valiant gentleman; but not a little given to romance, when he spake of himself.

Politics are vulgar when they are not liberalised by history, and history fades into mere literature when it loses sight of its relation to practical politics.

Once you have money, you can quite truthfully affirm that money isn't everything.

I do consider the individual things individual, in a way because that is what I do I guess, try to find out what is special about each medium.

Love is a wine; you have to taste it, you have to drink it, you have to become drunk with it, only then do you know what it is.

When the lives of the unborn are snuffed out, they often feel pain, pain that is long and agonizing.