A cultural snob is someone who claims to be familiar with the incomprehensible.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.

Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.

I think you better hurry along with that French toast making, Stud. You know—before my fetus eats your face.”“It would be equally as delicious.

A man isn't a man until he has to meet a payroll.

Where I came from, sports were the only way to get out front.

A sacred respect for the constitutional law is the vital principle, the sustaining energy of a free government.

You can't charge for anything in Brazil.

In a nutshell: Medical research has shown that Hypericum is an effective treatment for depression-as successful as prescription anti-depressions in a majority of patients.

The most interesting things that happen in my books are usually the things that arise spontaneously, the things that surprise me.

I'll put it frankly - Britain has more influence in China than Norway or Switzerland, with all respect for the other countries.

The only road to doing good shows, is doing bad shows.

Successful salesmen, authors, executives and workmen of every sort need patience. The great liability of youth is not inexperience but impatience.