I recently did a piece for the Boston Pops and John Williams, and I hope that it's as well a composed piece as I've ever done for any other medium or occasion.

You don't underestimate either players or audience in any circumstances.

An audience shouldn't listen with complacency.

If you don't get feedback from your performers and your audience, you're going to be working in a vacuum.

The establishment in Britain is certainly against the arts and against education. If something doesn't make a profit, it's invalid, and art doesn't make a profit in that sense.

If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.

At the moment, in Britain we're facing such enormous cutbacks in education programs and music programs and art programs that you feel you are knocking your head against a brick wall.

Recently I've been participating in radio and television talk programs doing broadcasts and conferences, and shooting my mouth off and really going to town.

You can't pander to your audience. You might in the short term, but ultimately you can't hoodwink them, either.

I know what I want at least, and the older I get I think I'm better at getting it out of players and singers.

I'm not actually teaching any more, but I am writing pieces for schools all the time, and for kids.

The harbour of influence is richer in the cemeteries where people are buried with their music on their tongues unsung. Don't leave your potentials untouched!

A man and a woman wanting each other is by far one of the least sinful things I've seen

A society without the means to detect lies and theft soon squanders its liberty and freedom.

The long words are not the hard words, it is the short words that are hard. There is much more metaphysical subtlety in the word "damn" than in the word "degeneration."

I told the truth, I didn't come to fool you

I feel like part of your job as an actor is you're going to get noticed, and the more successful you get, the more noticed you are. It's kind of like a Catch-22.

I don't give out compliments easily.

Noel Coward said work is more fun than fun, but then he didn't work in the Bird's Eye factory packing frozen fish fingers nine hours a day, did he?

It's a pleasant thing to be young, and have ten toes.

Texas has a lot of electrical votes.