For every child prodigy that you know about, at least 50 potential ones have burned out before you even heard about them.
A sponge has that much absorbent capability and after a while you can pour water over it and nothing stays.
I settled on a game called I am a contribution. Unlike success and failure, contribution has no other side. It is not arrived at by comparison.
I was told when I went for a life-insurance exam when I was 18 that I was not likely to live past 50, so I refused to pay the premium.
If people had told me that I would have the stamina to conduct 'Ring Cycles,' I would have been amazed. I still am.
US presidents can make all the commitments and declarations they want until they are blue in the face, in the Muslim world they will always be perceived as partisan.
I liked very much when we lived in Hampstead. We would go for walks on the Heath. I liked it better than living in the centre of town.
People will have MP3s of every Miles Davis' record but never think of hearing any of them twice in a row - there's just too much to get through.
Growing up in Hollywood, like I did, I have a passion and a love for the movies, so I go to the cinema all the time.
I didn't grow up during the time that Louis Armstrong or Miles Davis and all those people were playing. So it's not really my responsibility to keep it up, what they were doing.
Sparks is a sporting charity that puts on golf tournaments for sick children, and my animal charities include Oldham Cats and Feline Care, a big cat charity close to me in Norfolk. I'm also a Freemason and the money they raise for charity is phenomen...
What is the source of power of musicians who are financially browbeaten, most of whom work for minimum wage or less? Musicians who cannot even afford to buy tickets to operas or concerts in which they themselves perform?
I think it comes from really liking literary forms. Poetry is very beautiful, but the space on the page can be as affecting as where the text is. Like when Miles Davis doesn't play, it has a poignancy to it.
For anyone who doesn't have that connection with Mozart, I urge those people to go and find some of his music, because it can quite genuinely make you just glad to be alive.
An hour of violin lessons in Berlin is an hour where you get the child interested in music. An hour in a violin lesson in Palestine is an hour away from violence, is an hour away from fundamentalism.
I thought that I would like to be affiliated with some school or institution. As time went on, I also decided on the subject that I wanted to get involved with in addition to music: it was Black Studies.
And to understand this, I think this is a most important point where I would like always to be understood what we do with the New York Philharmonic. That the meaning of the music is number one.
I feel like people around me are betters voting on the wrong horse in the race. I am that horse, always failing to make others win.
The conductor's gift does not always go hand in hand with that of composition; indeed, the union is found much more seldom than is popularly believed.
The composers could no longer direct all performances in person, and so the responsibility of interpreting their works in the spirit in which they had been conceived was placed upon conductors.
I have often heard the statement made by foreign singers, as a demonstrated fact, that the German artists are artists in feeling indeed, and serious in their devotion, but that their singing is crude.
