Learn everything you can, anytime you can, from anyone you can - there will always come a time when you will be grateful you did.

The secret of living is to find people who will pay you money to do what YOU would pay to do if you had the money.

Tanglewood [summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra] was a place where gods strode the earth.

Music - opera particularly - is a process which is endurable or successful only if it is achieved by people who love to collaborate.

We must continuously discipline ourselves to I remember how it felt the first moment.

If you approach an opera as though it were something that always went a certain way, that's what you get. I approach an opera as though I didn't know it.

Once in a while, when everything is just right, there is a moment of magic. People can live on moments of magic.

The fact is that great musical pieces take and hold the stage because they provide great emotional experiences.

That's what it is that you rehearse - the making of music, not the playing of notes as abstractions.

Success is important only to the extent that it puts one in a position to do more things one likes to do.

Opera is everything rolled into one - music, theater, the dance, color and voices and theatrical illusions.

One can learn from what is not said.

When my prayers are answered, I am happy because it was my wish. When my prayers are not answered, I am even more happy because that was gods wish.

[T]he source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being namely, that his errors are corrigible.

There can be no doubt that the average man blames much more than he praises. His instinct is to blame. If he is satisfied he says nothing; if he is not, he most illogically kicks up a row.

The more we live with what we imagine others think of us, the less we live with truth.

Dover's cliffs call to mind the Roman invasion; the Battle of Britain; our proximity to, yet difference from, mainland Europe; and international trade and exploration, both fair and exploitative.

Almost anyone who has ever attained any kind of public stature in his or her profession can expect sometimes to see a reflection in a cracked mirror.

Action not backed by knowledge and knowledge not translatable into action, both can not stand the test of time.

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

My children love me. I'm like the mother they never had.