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 was always interested in storytelling, particularly in theater and film. I liked creative things. My mom and dad are wonderful people, but both are tone deaf, so I don't know where the gene came from.

I found poetry at 12 and 13 and, lo and behold, learned that my attorney father had a background in poetry - as he wore dashikis and Afros in the '70s and named his kids Arabic names. He was a poet and a lot like The Last Poets and Gil Scott-Heron and all of these folks. He definitely was an artist.

I don't really have hobbies. I paint. I write. I direct videos. I take photos. I'm a creative person. A normal day for me is doing all of those things. Sometimes I stay up until 5 A.M. writing a song because I make music. It's the same with writing.

When I was 20, I wrote a film on spec and sent it to the BBC. They wrote back, 'Usually, when we reject submissions, we like to offer some encouragement, but in your case, we don't see any point in you continuing.' I took it as encouragement anyway, thinking that only people who write terrible things are capable of writing great things.