I was fifteen years old, and I hardly knew how to play a simple Bach prelude on the piano when I began to compose music, and at the most advanced level. I had never studied such things as harmony.

But if you go from Moscow to Budapest you think you are in Paris.

Yes, fractals are what I want to find in my music.

When I was younger I was completely without money - when I was studying in Budapest, when I was a refugee

Well I live in Vienna with my wife and son, and I teach in Hamburg, there will be no changes in that respect.

I think it was when I was nineteen, by that time the Jewish laws were already in force and the split was beginning to come about which isolated the Jewish culture.

Stravinsky used Mother Goose. He was influenced by Mother Goose, indirectly, but very beautifully

Then, after the war it was impossible to travel, after so many years of Hitler and Stalin.

However, I began composing as soon as I started taking piano lessons.

I continued to study Math and Physics on my own, but one and a half years later I realized that I did want to be a composer, and after that I never changed my mind.

I only want to give a metaphysic for my music.

The more I read, the more I acquire, the more certain I am that I know nothing.

When you give it a chance, IT will give YOU a chance.

Relentless, repetitive self talk is what changes our self-image.

You want a blood relative to lead your army? Get Marcie. She likes ordering people around. She'll be a natural.

I think that one thing fiction can offer, and must offer, is a place where someone's mind and their imagination can come to rest for a little while.

Everyone around me says, You're a genius! You're great! That's your voice! But I'm not sure if they're right.

Your husband this morning! Mine tonight! What do you take him for?' 'A man' smiled Cynthia. 'And therefore, if you won't let me call him changeable, I'll coin a word and call him consolable.

Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be.

I'm not an expert on the ways of Washington [but] it makes no sense to me that we're not funding control of our border.

I'm here to shine a bright light. I'm not here to be a guy of death. I just like 'KD' better.