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"But those musics do not address the larger kind of architecture in time that classical music does, whatever each one of us knows that classical music must mean."
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"We shape our buildings, thereafter they shape us."

"There are no rules of architecture for a castle in the clouds."

"Architecture has recorded the great ideas of the human race. Not only every religious symbol, but every human thought has its page in that vast book."

"If you put enough closets together, you have enough space for a room. If you put enough rooms together, you have enough room for a house. If you put enough houses together, you have space for a town, then a city, then a nation, then a world."

"I was planning to go into architecture. But when I arrived, architecture was filled up. Acting was right next to it, so I signed up for acting instead."

"All architecture is great architecture after sunset; perhaps architecture is really a nocturnal art, like the art of fireworks."

"It seems a fantastic paradox, but it is nevertheless a most important truth, that no architecture can be truly noble which is not imperfect."

"Modern architecture predominately specializes in designing what are essentially dimly lit caves."

"Trying to describe something musical is like dancing to architecture, it's really difficult."

"You can just drift unhappily towards this vision of heaven on earth, and ultimately that is what architecture is a vision of: Heaven on earth, at it's best."
Explore more quotes by Michael Tilson Thomas

"But if I can be convinced and then through the work that we do together, the orchestra can really be convinced of the big sweep of that communication that the piece suggests, then the audience will get it and it will be a good experience for all of us."

"It's kind of scary sometimes, I've seen this a lot in Asia. Children are given music lessons, very intensively I might add and involving great technical expertise sometimes, but you can tell that they have been told only to play happy pleasant music."

"Being a conductor is kind of a hybrid profession because most fundamentally, it is being someone who is a coach, a trainer, an editor, a director."

"And at the same time, you are of course a performer, but it's very important that you understand that your role as a performer is to get the best performance from those wonderful colleagues that you have the chance to work with."

"But some people will say you just did these programs. Well, yes, the programs are important and I'm proud of the programs, but mostly I'm proud of the way the San Francisco Symphony plays these programs."

"You know, they were returning to the language of the people and trying to use musical language, particularly as Copland did to create a musical language in which all Americans would feel that they had a stake."

"The first year I started in San Francisco, there was an American work on every program and there's been a lot of music by living composers and gradually that was part of the process of getting the audience really to trust me."

"The whole path of American music has been so much about the recognition of stylistic diversity, and the recognition of the importance of music which was from one of the vernacular traditions."

"But still as compared to many, many orchestras in the world, I think you find a lot more new music and living composers on our programs than many other places."
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