I knew I had to write a Mass of my own, but a real one.

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.

The author describes Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn as "seldom at ease without a gavel in his hand.

What is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.

It is the working man who is the happy man. It is the idle man who is the miserable man.

It is no coincidence that one cardinal rule in brainwashing is to remove from the victim all photographs of himself and people he has known.

If you could kick the posterior of the person who has hurt you the most, ...you wouldn't be able to sit down for six weeks.

It's Wierd not to be Wierd.

Now everybody has to work together. They are the fourth estate. Incredibly powerful.

When you sell in desperation, you always sell cheap.

Skills vary with the man. We must tread a straight path and strive by that which is born in us.

Compromise is part and parcel of making a movie. It's a question of the kinds of compromises that you have to make.