There is nothing more demoralizing than a small but adequate income.
A conductor should guide rather than command.
Music does not know the difference between people; it only speaks to their hearts. It is the only form of communication that can bring this terrible world together.
The conductor's stand is not a continent of power, but rather an island of solitude.
I'm not shy in the spotlight. I might seem austere and even arrogant, but far from it, I'm actually shy.
You have to be able to enthral and persuade at the same time.
Soccer and sports are entertainment. . . You can't call Beethoven's 9th Symphony or a work of Shakespeare `entertainment. ' It's not `entertainment. ' It's culture.
There are, broadly speaking, two types of drinkers. There is the man whom we all know, stupid, unimaginative, whose brain is bitten numbly by numb maggots; who walks generously with wide-spread, tentative legs, falls frequently in the gutter, and who sees, in the extremity of his ecstasy, blue mice and pink elephants. . . . The other type of drinker has imagination, vision. Even when most pleasantly jingled he walks straight and naturally, never staggers nor falls, and knows just where he is and what he is doing. It is not his body but his brain that is drunken.
Mathematicians practice absolute freedom.
Rhymes with push-koo; I always say it sounds like a breakfast cereal.
Thus I spoke, more and more softly; for I was afraid of my own thoughts and the thoughts behind my thoughts.