Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.

Art is not only about angst.

The French Revolution is the ultimate modernist statement. Destroy everything. Don't build on the past. There is no past.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make.

I have tremendous respect for film composers.

You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award.

I find respect for a mediocre British composer, as opposed to a really good American, ridiculous because they automatically respect a composer if he's from England.

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.

I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.

I always conceive a piece as a different set of challenges.

I'm one-hundred-fifty miles off Cape Horn, both autopilots are broken, and my boat is drifting toward one of the nastiest chunks of ocean on the face of the earth.

The Will I fell in love with, she almost said."And be Will," she finished instead. "Or I shall hit you with my umbrella.

There are more men threatned then stricken. [There are more men threatened than stricken.]

I'm very happy that the New York Times has spoken well of my stuff; who wouldn't be? But it's not a choice I made.

My prayer, my sacrifice, my life and my death is all for Allah, The Lord of The Worlds.

World is crazier and more of it than we think, Incorrigibly plural.

It is difficult, none the less, for the ordinary man to cast off orthodox beliefs, for he is seldom allowed to hear the other side... Whereas the Christian view is pressed on him day in and day out.

Character actors are becoming a thing of the past. They're just going by the wayside. They're just cutting through that caliber of acting.

I am so glad you are here. It helps me realize how beautiful my world is.

History is strewn with ideas that were intuitive and made sense at the time, but were also hopelessly wrong.