We keep secrets from people that we love because we're afraid of our own truth. I think sometimes we're afraid to hurt people, because you never know. I think we're afraid of what is, and what can't be.
The work is the most important thing.
Brahms believed that there was no need to publish absolutely everything that Schubert ever wrote.
And what unity is to be had, at a time when orchestras are dying out, and when opera houses are about to close their doors; what's going to come next - when nothing new in music, for the orchestra, is truly lasting: pieces are performed once, and then they're thrown away.
All music has to speak in some form or other.
Within each individual young person you meet, you have the same fields to plough. The trick is just to wake them up, to sharpen their ears for what's already there in the music.
With creative people, truly new horizons open up.
The purpose of healing is to live while you are alive instead of dying while you are alive. Healing is about being broken and whole at the same time.
'Christian' used to be a throwaway word. People didn't used to use it much. People didn't start self-labeling or getting labeled Christian until the last part of the 20th century. Before that, you might identify as a Baptist, or a Southern Baptist or a Methodist. But there wasn't one identifier that put you in a fold with all the other believers.
My first single I was nominated for a Grammy with 'Crank That,' and I lost a Grammy to Kanye West, but it was still such a big deal for me to be nominated anyway.
There are ages in which the rational man and the intuitive man stand side by side, the one in fear of intuition, the other with scorn for abstraction. The latter is just as irrational as the former is inartistic.