I know that the twelve notes in each octave and the variety of rhythm offer me opportunities that all of human genius will never exhaust.

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.

Oh, the days will be tough that I promise is true but right around the corner the dream will be Infront of you.

Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.

Waiting taught me, I can't have it in my way. But in God's way.

We are also further than ever from equality of opportunity.

I grew up in the Bronx where you would stay up late with your girlfriends, just being silly in our bedrooms, whatever. And I was always the clown.

Take from the altars of the past the fire - not the ashes.

I was never a wet-eyed, passionate writer; I was always a policeman.

Friends should always tell you the truth. But please don’t.

If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs.

I am happy with what I do. I'd love to be the manager of the Atlanta Braves, but they hired somebody this week. So I'll just have to be inordinately happy with one of the best jobs on the planet.