My parents had chosen the medical profession for me. I even studied a few semesters at St Xavier's College, but at the back of my mind, I always wanted to be a musician like my father.

I love rap because it talks about pain that comes authentically from the ghetto. It moves me.

I knew at university that medicine was just not for me. I saved many lives by not being a doctor!

A woman's life in the orchestra is not as long as a man's; she is just not as good at 60 as a man is at 60.

It's hard to find an emblem of cultural, national pride that burns as bright as Israel's success in classical music.

In this art form, in any art form, generalities are useless.

In truth, I became a conductor because deep down I wanted to conduct Brahmss four symphonies and Richard Strausss tone poems.

Although I am flexible and ready to take advice, I can't carry an umbrella of thoughts over my head that would distract me and affect my music making.

I feel that the critic and music director should have such a good relationship they can pick up the phone and call each other any time.

There are three orchestras in Munich, all world-quality, in a city of one million. Yet every hall is full.

Rock music is predictable, unless theres great talent involved.

You deplore what I did, but you still want to know the results of my research.

Nature has given women so much power that the law has very wisely given them little.

I've never wanted to kill myself over anything major. It's always the little things that do me in.

Vaccination is one of the easiest things on the way to development. It's much easier than roads and a great education system. It's very basic. It's one of the first things you want to get right.

In business, you try to solve problems.

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

The Hulk is like a haiku; you've got to find just the right words. I think, and I hope, we did that with The Avengers.

I have to keep working, not to arrive at finish, which arouses the admiration of fools... I must seek completion only for the pleasure of being truer and more knowing.

To me avarice seems not so much a vice as a deplorable piece of madness.

My job is writing for people to enjoy and then writing about a broader and a deeper world.