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

Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time... The wait is simply too long.

Stillness is our most intense mode of action. It is in our moments of deep quiet that is born every idea, emotion, and drive which we eventually honor with the name of action. We reach highest in meditation, and farthest in prayer. In stillness every human being is great.

Music can name the unnameable and communicate the unknowable.

I'm no longer quite sure what the question is, but I do know that the answer is Yes.

When I am with composers, I say I am a conductor. When I am with conductors, I say I am a composer.

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.