Michael Tilson Thomas Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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I knew I wanted to pursue a career in the theater the minute I graduated from college having not pursued it! So I went back to school and got a degree in music and began working in musical theater.
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I love music; I come from a region of Kurdistan that is a base for music.
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If you meet me, you might not get to know me. If you hear my music? You'll get to know me.
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I don't tend to set out on huge world domination goals or have anything in mind. I just like to play. I like to gig a lot; I like to write music.
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Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
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There is so much great talent in the underground, and electronic music is finally getting the props that it's deserved for so long. I feel like now that everyone is discovering it and it's so fresh sounding to so many people. It doesn't get any more rock n' roll than playing EDC or the Staples Center. It's really madness.
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I think music docs could turn off some people.
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The real reason we ended up getting into that type of music was our dad worked for an oil company so we spent a year overseas when we were young kids. Because of that, it was all Spanish TV and radio so we ended up having these '50s and '60s tapes, tapes of that music.
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One small cat changes coming home to an empty house to coming home.
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I'm a huge fan of meditation. I know lots of people assume meditation to be some Buddhist mumbo-jumbo, but it's been scientifically documented to create therapeutic changes in the brain.
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Usually I'm pretty myopic. It's hard for me to multi-task, so to speak. If I'm in a show and I'm creating a character, I'm just completely into that. It's really hard for me to do anything else like write music. I have to sort of shut down different sides of my head and just focus.
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It really is true that when an issue becomes pop culture, it changes faster, and it's really great for the issue.
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Dealing with those personalities and the people who run this music thing has been most challenging. It's hard to really communicate things to people who run a business yet forget the nature of the business. They only look at the bottom line and the financial return, you know, they forget what it is they're packaging. It's art.
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I have a lot of respect for Eminem and Rihanna. They are both very real in their music.
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I had a friend who had been teaching music for a long time, and he knew a bunch of teachers, so I just put up the money and started a school.
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I can't just sit down and make a song in a day. It's only possible if you focus on the music and not the sound.
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We want people to listen to records, to a whole body of music. I want you to buy into my life, not just one subject in my life.
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Producers on Broadway approached us with an original script after relaunching ourselves as 'A Great Big World,' and wanted us to write the music. They asked us to make the music we would sing if we could, and so we can go a little crazier. We refer to it as 'our music on steroids.'
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You always draw from your roots. I'm influenced by everything I hear and see, and that includes music today, but obviously I go back to my early influences: Stevie Wonder, Parliament, Earth, Wind & Fire, Ohio Players, Average White Band. Those kind of artists are what I look to. When I hear that stuff on the radio, I turn it up!
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I think right now the way society's going, I think role models are important, and kids need direction. If I didn't have that direction growing up, who knows what I could be doing, because I've been lost many times in my life, and I've had to have someone guide me back on the right path.
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I tell the most horrible jokes.
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Juan Tripp was a friend. Good name for an airline man, huh? Juan Tripp after another?
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If you want to reach the top, don't run over others. Likely, the only way you'll reach the top is to be carried there by others.
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The world changes when there's music in it.
