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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Women are no sheep.

Inside my head is a jigsaw made of trillions and trillions and trillions of atoms. It might take a while.

Wars are not paid for in wartime, the bill comes later.

And after I played them both a few times, I realized they were two halves of the same song.

Have you ever heard the expression: Walk a mile in my shoes, and then judge me? And write your own books.

If people don't believe the source, then we aren't going to change their minds. We just won't.

Not everything is about money. You didn't even say, hello. You are not your sad little wallet.

When the world seems to shine like you've had too much wine, that's amore.

We cannot afford idleness, waste or inefficiency.

. . . in the full tide of successful experiment.