I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major.

My chief virtue (or if you like, defect) has been a tireless lifelong search for an original, individual musical idiom. I detest imitation, I detest hackneyed devices.

Formalism is music that people don't understand at first hearing.

I want nothing better, more flexible or more complete than the sonata form, which contains everything necessary for my structural purposes.

At home we didnt talk about religion. So gradually the question faded away by itself and disappeared from the agenda. When I was nineteen my father died; my response to his death was atheistic.

My mother had to explain that one couldnt compose a Liszt rhapsody because it was a piece of music that Liszt himself had composed.

You can't achieve what you can't imagine being done

Find me the perfect human being and I'll show you Jesus Christ.

She can go places we cannot, associate with people we cannot, understand things about society types and women that we never can. (Why Mr. Burke hires Violet Strange.)

The People, when they start to applaud you and support, that means a lot

Nine million Americans a year, that we know of, struggle with infertility.

What are these so-called austerity measures? What do they really bring? Oh, they bring a lot more poverty. Oh, they bring a worse GDP. Oh, they bring more unemployment.

The issue isn't the accuracy of the bombs you have, it's how you use the bombs you have - and more importantly, whether you ought to use bombs at all.

We are Spiritual Beings have a Human Experience. Not the other way around.

Every pore of you is crying and you don't even understand why or what. I actually kind of died and got born again as a result of taking the meds and having a chance to, you know, build a life.

Knowing what to leave out is just as important as knowing what to focus on.