Quotes from Zubin Mehta

The New York Philharmonic is a tremendous opportunity, a great orchestra.

The amount of culture going on in a small country like Israel is amazing.

I have been to Kashmir many times, especially with my family, in the '70s.

All these people who scream about Kashmir being an armed camp are in fact responsible for keeping it that way.

I am jealous of all those people who live on the shore of Dal Lake.

I'm really not a party person. I'm in the business of working with 100 people every day, so I don't revel in meeting a roomful of people in my leisure time.

I'm a Persian Jew, and we don't speak Hebrew.

We are so indebted to our ancestors, musically speaking, that they have left us 400 years of music.

I feel growing up in Mumbai is an advantage, as we grow up speaking so many languages that when we go abroad, it becomes easier to learn new languages.

I think conductors do spend too little time with their orchestras.

A woman's life in the orchestra is not as long as a man's; she is just not as good at 60 as a man is at 60.

I just want to play for Hindus and Muslims that sit together. That's all I want to do.

If North American musicians would only know how uncomfortable life is for European musicians.

Even in music concerts in Mumbai and different parts of the world, seats are reserved for sponsors.

I miss the standard of the New York Philharmonic's playing very much. It has certainly been a high point in my life.

American musicians are very giving - they have the highest standard in the world - but they are also very demanding in their conditions.

The 'New York Times' reviews of my work have been evenly divided - favourable and unfavourable.

I knew at university that medicine was just not for me. I saved many lives by not being a doctor!

Let's try to count the number of Nobel prize-winners that have emerged from scientific centres of excellence like the Weizmann Institute and Haifa's technical university, the Technion. There has to be at least 25.

I love to conduct opera.

I would convert to Judaism if the operation didn't hurt so much.

There was an opinion expressed in the newspapers that, after 20 years, maybe the Israel Philharmonic should consider asking me to leave. I thought they might have a point, so I asked my orchestra. They told me overwhelmingly that they wanted me to stay.

There are three orchestras in Munich, all world-quality, in a city of one million. Yet every hall is full.

It seems always to have been difficult to have been a New York Philharmonic conductor because of the nature of New York. We are in direct competition with the great orchestras in the world who come to play in our hall or in Carnegie, and we are constantly compared. I think that 's a good thing.