Conducting is like making love to a hundred people at the same time.

Life without music is unthinkable.

In the olden days, everybody sang. You were expected to sing as well as talk. It was a mark of the cultured man to sing.

To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time.

It is the artists of the world, the feelers and the thinkers who will ultimately save us; who can articulate, educate, defy, insist, sing and shout the big dreams.

I believe in people. I feel, love, need and respect people above all else, including natural scenery, organized piety and nationalistic superstructures. One human figure on the slope of a mountain can make the mountain disappear for me, one person fighting for truth can disqualify for me the entire system which had dispensed it.

The key to the mystery of a great artist is that for reasons unknown, he will give away his energies and his life just to make sure that one note follows another... and leaves us with the feeling that something is right in the world.