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

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.

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.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

She is not truly beautiful but something about her draws the eye.

You cannot indeed say anything to anyone in this world. Whatever we ‘say’, it is ‘egoism’. The whole world is in order [in control].

Gratitude will make you feel great, choose to be grateful.

The stupid neither forgive nor forget the naive forgive and forget the wise forgive but do not forget.

They say it's darkest before the dawn, but it also tend to be quietest, and the quiet lets you hear yourself better.

Some people say the president is incapable of enforcing the law. Let them say that once more and I will set the tanks on them.

Within our mandate, the ECB is ready to do whatever it takes to preserve the euro. And believe me, it will be enough.

I'm very aware of what you're talking about as I was involved with the radio in Africa in the same period as I was doing Concrete - I was doing both at the same time.

Whenever society gets too stifling and the rules too complex, there's some sort of musical explosion.

Fighting for survival in a shattered world... the truth is her only hope.