I think art can reflect tragedy.

Art is not only about angst.

The French Revolution is the ultimate modernist statement. Destroy everything. Don't build on the past. There is no past.

Jazz is not the popular culture. Jazz is in the same position in our culture as classical music. A very small minority of people really love it.

What I think of as style - and I've gotten to this over years of really thinking about it - is that style is the unconscious choices I make.

I have tremendous respect for film composers.

You become a great composer when you win a Pulitzer. But I think that now it's a completely meaningless award.

I find respect for a mediocre British composer, as opposed to a really good American, ridiculous because they automatically respect a composer if he's from England.

I'm glad I won it because when I grew up the Pulitzer was the award that every composer wanted and I was like that too.

I think it's good for the composer to teach because you always have new students and you have to begin at the beginning and make things clear.

Eighty percent of my pieces gravitate towards an A, as a tonal thing, not at the beginning, but somewhere in it.

You cannot win at that which you never start.

Isn't it amazing how it's always the very people who insist other people be grateful for charity that get the most insulted when they're offered charity themselves? I've often noticed it.

Hard to find and even harder to listen to

Ironically, since Obama was elected, for the first time in my life I'm sometimes not proud of my country.

Writing is an incredibly creatively empowering experience for me. It is the place where nobody tries to control what I'm doing.

I thought the tooth fairy was a very creepy concept as a kid. "Put your tooth under the pillow." I was like "Why does someone want my teeth?".

I moved from Minnesota out to Los Angeles and I thought I was going to hate it out there, but I really like it.

Family is the only anchor that will hold in a choppy sea.

Anticipatory plagiarism occurs when someone steals your original idea and publishes it a hundred years before you were born.

We like lists because we don't want to die.