A conductor should guide rather than command.

The conductor's stand is not a continent of power, but rather an island of solitude.

I have closed that page of my life without rancor. I do not disown any of the work done.

Nobility of spirit has more to do with simplicity than ostentation, wisdom rather than wealth, commitment rather than ambition.

I don't want to bother them and ruin the party they are preparing so carefully at La Scala.

It is extraordinary to have time to again study Le nozze di Figaro and discover new things.

You have to be able to enthral and persuade at the same time.

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 channel the interpretation and performance into 100 people. And with the audience, the critics.

A conductor should guide rather than command.

The moment you think you have charisma you are finished.

I don't want the United States to be Athens on the Potomac.

It is important to express oneself provided the feelings are real and are taken from your own experience.

The biggest lesson that I've learned is that fashion is this tightrope where you have to be consistent but inconsistent. You need the connective thread but at the same time you need a sense of surprise.

Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.

I don't like to watch golf on television because I can't stand people who whisper.

My decorating and renovation skills are nil - indeed, I once used a shower curtain from Pottery Barn as 'window dressing.'

As mayor of San Francisco, I will provide the vision and work hard to make San Francisco a beautiful, well-planned city with excellent housing and transportation options.

I'm too busy thinking what I'm going to say next to remember what I've said, but my staff tells me I'm sometimes funny. Not always on purpose, though.

My fat cells have a memory like Einstein! I'm proof that surgery is not a magic potion. There are many ways to sabotage it.

After closely examining my conscience, I venture to state that in my historical novels I intended the content to be just as modern and up-to-date as in the contemporary ones.

I highly recommend worrying. It is much more effective than dieting.

O man you are busy working for the world, and the world is busy trying to turn you out.

You can sell nothing for a mark-up for a while, but only until something starts eating away at it. Now I can go home and click on Yahoo, call my sister and talk over a microphone for free.

It's essential to distinguish between events that are really beyond your control and events you caused yourself.

With 'Blue Slide Park' I wanted to have a number one album, and I did do it, so I'm not mad at it, but that was its goal.

I don't think of 'Macbeth' as the villain. I don't think of 'King Lear' as the villain. I don't think of 'Hamlet' as the villain. I don't think of 'Travis Bickle' as the villain.

I was who I was in high school in accordance with the rules of conduct for a normal person, like obeying your mom and dad. Then I got out of high school and moved out of the house, and I just started, for lack of a better term, running free.

Globalization was a deep trend pushed by technology and right ideas, as much as anything else.

I think a lot of the world searches in vain for happiness in ways that will not bring them happiness.

I won't go so far as to say that novels sell in inverse proportion to their worth, for just occasionally, someone like Dickens or George Eliot comes along to prove the opposite.

The IMAX cameras are big and heavy. And they're loud. So you have to be mindful of whether or not they're worth it; I'd say the image quality is incredible and the scale is amazing.

My father kept me busy from dawn to dusk when I was a kid. When I wasn't pitching hay, hauling corn or running a tractor, I was heaving a baseball into his mitt behind the barn... If all the parents in the country followed his rule, juvenile delinquency would be cut in half in a year's time.

Now why should the cinema follow the forms of theater and painting rather than the methodology of language, which allows wholly new concepts of ideas to arise from the combination of two concrete denotations of two concrete objects?

There are many women with children under five who want to work and who lack affordable, high-quality child care.