I remember once, when I started writing for the alto saxophone, a saxophonist told me to think of it as being like a cross between an oboe and a viola, but louder.

There's another way of making music, by touching the lives and feelings of ordinary people.

The academic area of new music or modern music festivals is not something which attracts me at all.

Still, American composers working in France have had a pretty hard time.

I have friends who have a CD mastering plant in Hollywood and they are very sceptical about European record labels' understanding of digital technology.

Similarly you can make a transition from one set of instruments to another imperceptibly.

I am writing something which I find satisfying and which I am prepared to put my name to as a composer.

Music history has flowed under the bridges for many years.

Writing tonal music now, you are not writing into the 19th Century.

It's rather like attending a university seminar where you are talking to a few gifted specialists who deliver a paper to an audience of their peers. That's one way of making music.

One thing I'm doing on the new Titanic recording is actually bringing in different acoustic spaces.

In the greatest trial, we behold the greatness of our great God.

What you don't wish for will always be beyond your reach.

My room for books and study or for sitting and thinking about nothing in particular to see what would happen was at the end of a hall.

I write human stories. I write about people. Not as a product of their environment. But from the stance that everybody is made of the same thing.

As Angelo discovered in Measure for Measure, nothing corrupts like virtue.

Even in the inevitable moments when all seems hopeless, men know that without hope they cannot really live, and in agonizing desperation they cry for the bread of hope.

Power is everywhere...because it comes from everywhere.

That's always been my test for what makes a story: is this something journalists would gossip with each other about?

I see a good deal of talk from Washington about lowering taxes-I hope they do get 'em lowered enough so people can afford to pay 'em

Other than to amuse himself, why should a man pretend to know where he's going or understand what he sees?