The act of conducting in itself, of waving my arms in the air and being in charge, I didn't miss. I missed the sensual pleasure of being in contact with music.

Once you get over the first hill, there is always a new, higher one lurking, of course.

There will have to be times when I'm not conducting because I'm composing. I haven't solved that problem, and perhaps I never will.

Orchestras have become used to the emphasis on the separation of layers, of the ultimate precision and clarity.

As we watch TV or films, there are no organic transitions, only edits. The idea of A becoming B, rather than A jumping to B, has become foreign.

My music wouldn't sound the way it does if I hadn't had the experience of conducting.

Pulse as an active means of expression, Stravinsky and Beethoven are the two masters of that.

This conducting thing happened. In 1983 I was sucked into this international career, which was a very scary experience.

I discovered that the people of the North are different and there's no way you can make a person from the North similar to a Southerner. They're two different worlds.

I feel very free and very happy to be a composer.

The underlying process in Northern music tends to be slower and continuous, whatever's happening on the surface; in Southern music the underlying process is always faster.

If this was mental illness, or even just a particularly clinical case of adolescence, I was bearing up pretty well.

I can honestly say that I understand women very well. If you understand yourself, you understand women, because, in the end, all women are the same.

People are often afraid for me. They think that I am going to break. I can make it through a set.

The aim of constitutional government is to preserve the Republic; that of revolutionary government is to lay its foundation.

The positive thing about writing is that you connect with yourself in the deepest way. You get a chance to know who you are, to know what you think. You begin to have a relationship with your mind.

Gingrich first backed the concept in 1993, "I am for people, individuals - exactly like automobile insurance - individuals having health insurance and being required to have health insurance.

If you must make a noise, make it quietly.

In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.

A horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.

Let us carve gems out of our stony hearts and let them light our path to love.