Jewish intellectuals contributed a great deal to insure that Europe became a continent of humanism, and it is with these humanist ideals that Europe must now intervene in the Middle East conflict.

On Nov. 5, 2012, my friend Elliott Carter died in New York at the age of 103. For me, he was and remains one of the most interesting figures of music history in the past century.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

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 got a big Filipino family. That's what I love about being Pinoy: we all gotta surround ourselves with family; we all gotta laugh and do things together. I love it! It's family first.

We were like a white family from the 1920s or something. My parents had this bizarre, different way of looking at things from the people that surrounded us. I went to an all-Mexican grade school and an all-black high school, and not many people in those places liked the same stuff as me.

When I was growing up my mother would say, 'Your dad may have to learn about being a father because he lost his own and that would have affected him'.

It's quite difficult for a parent to know that their daughter is in great danger.