The world changes when there's music in it.

Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director.

If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music].

Classical music is an unbroken, living tradition that goes back over 1,000 years, and every one of those years has had something unique and powerful to say to us about what it's like to be alive.

The big difference between human happiness and sadness? Thirty-seven freakin' vibrations.

You can't have Bach, Mozart and Beethoven as your favorite composers. They simply define what music is!

Classical music is a wonderful 1200 year-old tradition that witnesses everything that it has meant and what it means right now to be human.

The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions.

I think music needs to be presented in a way so that kids can grasp songs, dances, simple music that's associated with some particular defining moment in human experience.

When I first was conducting as guest conductor in Europe 25 years ago, I would propose doing American pieces and grudgingly it would be accepted from time to time.

Extreme volume in music very often disguises a lack of actually important content.

Faith gives you an inner strength and a sense of balance and perspective in life.

I remain in a state of surrender knowing the Universe is supporting me in creating a life I love.

The light of the day is followed by night, as a shadow follows a body.

If trouble comes when you least expect it then maybe the thing to do is to always expect it.

The rig work can be rewarding to pull off, a really good rig in a set of wires where you're throwing yourself up walls and doing moves mid-air. That's just fun.

I'm in love with a lot of things. Some of those things love me back. And some of them don't - and one of them is Radiohead.

People have to be reminded that unions played a very historic role in our economy.

For me painting is a dramatic action in the course of which reality finds itself split apart

Cousin, the days of gods and heroes are over." "Not to me. Not to them.

I know I can't play funny roles in movies. I tried, and it didn't work.