Because I had been in conservatory for so long, I was jealous of my friends in bands.

The score is doing a lot of work. It's like Wagner. It's like a yak carrying people.

I think my generation is a lost generation in a way.

I'm trying to phase out my availability on the phone. People call you when you're walking down the street and say the most random stuff.

For me the best kind of film music is liturgical music. Liturgical music is essentially a million scores for the same film.

In really fancy restaurants they never point to the bathroom, they just gesture toward the bathroom or they'll lead you to the bathroom. The fancier the restaurant, the less pointing there is.

Writing orchestra music, you need for the emotional content to come from everyone doing everything together, adding up as it goes, a crowd mentality.

Every couple weeks I'll listen to Sibelius's Seventh Symphony, just to check in, to see how it's doing. It's doing OK.

I'm pretty clear about what I'm capable of doing.

Whenever I get asked to write orchestra music or music that is for a lot of players, I try to make it a little sad.

I didn't entertain the idea that my music would ever become available in any of the ways that I had previously known music to be available.

Life has the meaning we give it, no more, no less.

Theology is for homemakers who need to know who God is, who they are, and what this mundane life is all about.

one emotion after another crept into her face like objects into a slowly developing picture.

As a mom, you worry about protecting your kid. But there are extra added layers of fears when you're talking about a kid with autism or who has some special needs issue.

What do you know about being sad?' 'I know you don't need a reason.

I have never had a point in my life to make. I'm just trying to entertain the reader.

How families deal with loss, everyone has their own process.

You need to go and find someone to teach you the rudiments of irrational discourse.

What I really want to say: That what the world really needs is a real feeling of kinship. Everybody: stars, laborers, Negroes, Jews, Arabs. We are all brothers.

We have but one rule here, and that is that every student must be a gentleman.