Michael Tilson Thomas Quotes

If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music].

Michael Tilson Thomas

• Wonder
• Inspiration
• motivation
• Capacity

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Quotes to Explore

• For a long time, I thought I was going to play basketball. There's not many 6-4 white guys playing the three spot in the NBA, so I realized I probably didn't have much of a future in basketball and that football was probably going to be my best bet.

  

  Sam Bradford
  • Time
  • Long
  • Future

• People who live in glass houses... have to answer the door.

  

  Karl Pilkington
  • People
  • Live
  • Door

• I don't want to kill windowing; I want to restore choice and options.

  

  Ted Sarandos
  • Want
  • Choice
  • Options

• I don't get far enough into a boring book to hate it.

  

  Garry Wills
  • Book
  • Hate
  • Enough

• I came into the rap game in 1992; my life was changing, but my group wasn't successful; I also saw the biggest rappers in the world die all of a sudden in the ensuing years, so it was a matter of conquering yourself before you can conquer the world.

  

  Ja Rule
  • Life
  • World
  • Game

• I've met Bob Dylan. We did one of those non-handshake handshakes. I was with all guys, and he shook hands with all of them, and then they said, 'And this is Kate,' and I put my hand out, and he didn't put his out. And then I took my hand away, and he put his out. It was one of those. We finally did shake. And then I fainted!

  

  Kate Moss
  • Hand
  • Hands
  • Said

• Most of us were probably less than immaculately honest as teenagers; it's practically encoded into adolescence that you savor your secrets, dress in disguise, carve out some space for experiments and accidents and all the combustible lab work of becoming who you are.

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • Work
  • Space
  • Dress

• Emmitt Smith is a great running back. One of the things I like about him along with Edgerrin James is that neither one of them 'show out' when they run a touchdown.

  

  Earl Campbell
  • Great
  • Running
  • Run

• I have always watched my close friends fall in love, but I never thought it would happen to me.

  

  Uday Kiran
  • Love
  • Friends
  • Fall

• Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • You
  • Wealth
  • Pizza

• Love is the only reality and it is not a mere sentiment. It is the ultimate truth that lies at the heart of creation.

  

  Rabindranath Tagore
  • Love
  • For Her
  • Creation

• Tanning is tricky, because a lot of people just look orange.

  

  Laura Linney
  • People
  • Look
  • Orange

• I have friends who are science journalists, and I'm seeing stories of theirs or talking with them about ideas that they're pitching. Certain kinds of science are around me all the time, like climate change and biology.

  

  Paolo Bacigalupi
  • Time
  • Friends
  • Science

• Early-twentieth-century abstraction is art's version of Einstein's Theory of Relativity. It's the idea that changed everything everywhere: quickly, decisively, for good.

  

  Jerry Saltz
  • Good
  • Art

• I guess it's hard work... whatever the decision is, how to show it to people that aren't necessarily dancers, how to get people to think about more than themselves.

  

  Kyle Abraham
  • People
  • Work
  • Decision

• My dad was a really big baseball guy who helped coach me and thought the game should be played the right way.

  

  Drew Pomeranz
  • Guy
  • Game
  • Dad

• The predicate of modern medicine is, 'We invalidate your humanity, but we give you immortality, so you have to shut up and listen to us.'

  

  David Milch
  • Up
  • Humanity

• It's hard to start from the bottom.

  

  Lou Duva

• I could be playing high school until I'm, like, 30 or something, at the rate I'm growing.

  

  Danielle Panabaker
  • School
  • High
  • Growing

• Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.

  

  Tacitus
  • Truth
  • Freedom
  • Fear

• There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back.

  

  Alan Shepard
  • Inspiration
  • Moon
  • Leaving

• Regardless of the cultural system, social pressure to appear straight seems to be fairly intense cross-culturally. Indeed, one is inclined to wonder, if being straight is just natural, why does it require quite so much policing?

  

  Alice Dreger
  • Why
  • Wonder

• If you're curious, if you have a capacity for wonder, if you're alive, you know all that you need to know [about music].

  

  Michael Tilson Thomas
  • Wonder
  • Inspiration
  • motivation