I am in the present. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring forth. I can know only what the truth is for me today. That is what I am called upon to serve.

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 have nothing but contempt for the kind of governor who is afraid, for whatever reason, to follow the course that he knows is best for the State.

Christmas ought to be brought up to date, ” Maria said. “It ought to have gangsters, and aeroplanes and a lot of automatic pistols.

I've learned that making a 'living' is not the same thing as 'making a life'.

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses.

When your consciousness is directed outward, mind and world arise. When it is directed inward, it realises its own Source and returns home into the Unmanifested.

... love is healing, even rootless love.

Love yourself down to the bone, down to the roof of your mouth. Leave no stone unturned, no cell unwanted. Love down to the blood no matter how fast it boils.

(Slaughter) means blood and iron. [Lat., Coedes videtur significare sanguinem et ferrum.]

Television and film are such streamlined story mediums. You can't really meander about, whereas a novel is an interior experience.

I think women are very powerful and I think we're more powerful together than separated.