Composers today get a TV script on Friday and have to record on Tuesday. It's just dreadful to impose on gifted talent and expect decent music under these conditions.

Fear is a problem with film music and films; people want to be conventional, and there's more commercialism today. If you are not daring in your art, you're bankrupt.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

Being an old radical, I like films like Spartacus. I could relate to the hero.

I prefer to write music for family films. I like people.

When I decided to go to a country that subsidized music, I went to the Soviet Union for two years.

Much blood has been spilled over words, and a great deal of it over the word ‘God.’ (125)

Books appear to be the most immediate instruments of speculative delight.

In Congress, I was a relentless advocate for fiscal responsibility.

Sooner or later, wittingly or unwittingly, we must pay for every intrusion on the natural environment.

Things are never so bad they can't be made worse.

That is what we do. That is what people do. They stay alive for each other.

Sometimes I get really lonely. Especially when I'm throwing a Frisbee.

Courage in the path is what makes the path manifest itself.

I was always self-taught, there was no-one to study with when I was doing composition.

Any translation which intends to perform a transmitting function cannot transmit anything but information-hence, something inessential. This is the hallmark of bad translations.