They are representations of many shared hours of collaboration between us all. That's the real nature of the relationship the orchestra and I are trying to build.

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.

When in doubt, be ridiculous.

With humanity, life has ended up with a living creature that never quite finds itself in the right place, a living creature destined to wander and endlessly make mistakes.

...very lonely and, often, very unhappy, with the poignant misery that comes to lonely people who long to be social and cannot, somehow, step naturally and unselfconsciously into some friendly group

Creativity has often been analogized as “Thinking outside of the box.

The conscious experience of being a subject arises when a single organism learns to enslave itself.

Don't tell your friend you are fighting with your wife, he will use your weakness against you

It's the first day of spring. That means this weekend I'll take down my Christmas lights.

I went from zero to my own hero

The well of Providence is deep. It's the buckets we bring to it that are small.

When we ask for heaven, we are asking for stasis. A form of comfort that will last for eternity. Yes, that is what we all want, the way we understand happiness.