Controversial means somebody who makes people think. And if you are afraid of people who will be against you, you might as well stay home and do nothing.

When you love somebody and they die young and you are young, too, it is very hard.

Any conductor who tells you that if he is approached for the directorship of the Chicago Symphony that he's not interested in it, you know perfectly well he's lying.

You have to really have the will to hang onto the first note as it is being played, and then really stay with it and take the flight, as it were, you know, for the duration of the piece.

Music means different things to different people and sometimes even different things to the same person at different moments of his life.

I think what history has done to Jewish people, frankly, cannot be made good by giving them a piece of land.