Poor people have to pay high rents to marriage halls for conducting functions like wedding. Therefore, to benefit them, I have directed constructing 'Amma Marriage Halls.'

My job in space will be to observe and write a journal. I am also going to be teaching a class for students on earth about life in space and on the space shuttle and conducting experiments.

Creating artworks, writing and publishing novels, poetry, music, or conducting art-historical research requires support. So does everything else in the world, from physics to fish and wildlife management to human-rights advocacy.

We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) ever got out, the difference between a legal, authorized, necessary, and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs (military police) would be buried by the impact of the images.

In my imagination yes, I remember, when I was six years old, I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it's real.

Conducting is about communication. You don't play any notes, but you communicate with the musicians.

Well, I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday, and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

Nothing was ever in tune. People just blindly grabbed at whatever there was: communism, health foods, zen, surfing, ballet, hypnotism, group encounters, orgies, biking, herbs, Catholicism, weight-lifting, travel, withdrawal, vegetarianism, India, painting, writing, sculpting, composing, conducting, backpacking, yoga, copulating, gambling, drinking, hanging around, frozen yogurt, Beethoven, Back, Buddha, Christ, TM, H, carrot juice, suicide, handmade suits, jet travel, New York City, and then it all evaporated and fell apart. People had to find things to do while waiting to die. I guess it was nice to have a choice.

The alarm in the morning? Well, I have an old tape of Carlo Maria Giulini conducting the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra in a perfectly transcendent version in Shubert's seventh symphony. And I've rigged it up so that at exactly 7:30 every morning it falls from the ceiling onto my face.

You cannot stay on the summit forever; you have to come down again. So why bother in the first place? Just this: What is above knows what is below, but what is below does not know what is above. One climbs, one sees. One descends, one sees no longer, but one has seen. There is an art of conducting oneself in the lower regions by the memory of what one saw higher up. When one can no longer see, one can at least still know.

The real art of conducting consists in transitions.

We knew that if the photos of CIA officers conducting authorized EIT (enhanced interrogation techniques) ever got out the difference between a legal authorized necessary and safe program and the mindless actions of some MPs (military police) would be buried by the impact of the images.

In my imagination yes I remember when I was six years old I was conducting all this concert in my house. But now it's real.

With 'Good Will Hunting ' Miramax made certain the recruited audience wasn't expecting to laugh at Robin Williams like they normally do. From my limited experience you can really blow test screenings by conducting them in the wrong way.

Well I started conducting kind of by accident. I wanted to give myself a special birthday present for my fortieth birthday and I was living in San Francisco at the time and I started attending some of the concerts and then simply dropping hints.