I think that our civilisation is very much a visual civilisation - television and videos and all this.

You find Jews, Irish, and Italians in every orchestra.

I know so many Irish musicians. They're all over, because there has been so much emigration from Ireland. Like the Jews.

Music is an art that touches the depth of human existence; an art of sounds that crosses all borders.

I think Sharon is anti-Israeli because it's in the interest of Israel to understand the problems of the other side.

I don't think I'm anti-Israeli.

Israel is in the grip of a ghetto mentality. We have a powerful army. We have the atomic bomb. But the psychology of what comes out of Israel has the tone of the Warsaw Ghetto.

I was never really interested in an operatic post, but I took on the Bastille because it seemed a unique opportunity to build an opera ensemble from scratch, and to deal with all the disciplines that go into opera - the music, the staging and the singing - in an interrelated way.

I don't believe in changing the unchangeable.

I am permanently relaxed.

Most of the time I spend looking for the 25th hour in the day, the ninth day in the week, the 32nd day in the month and the 367th, eighth or 70th day in the year because I feel I have a very rich life.

I am the conductor for life of the Staatskapelle in Berlin, which fills me with tremendous joy because I feel absolutely at one with them. When we play, I have a feeling that together we manage to create one collective lung for the whole orchestra so that everybody in the stage breathes the music in the same way.

I have accumulated so many experiences, so much, that I want to be able to realize so many things. This is why I have basically given up most of my positions.

When I played my first concert with an orchestra, I was eight years old in Berlin.

To play four hands requires two people who have great affinity for each other.

I used to conduct the last opera in Berlin on Sunday, get on a plane on Monday to Chicago, and start a rehearsal that same night, if it was a performance week.

I cannot be music director at La Scala and at Staatsoper. This would be unfair to one of the two institutions.

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.

The problem with listening to music today is that there's so much of it everywhere. We've got used to hearing music without actually listening to it.

When you get to be 103, modernism is a very wide concept.

I have loved Elliott Carter's music for many years.

The Iranian government still denies the Holocaust - so you can't take them seriously. And the Israeli government spreads rumours and disinformation about Iran - because it needs to for the creation of panic. I find these theological states - and in this respect, Israel and Iran are twin brothers - very, very dangerous.

In Arab culture, music is for celebration. You don't play music at funerals.

You used to queue for three days and two nights for tickets for Rubinstein. People stayed in the queue for the whole day.