In writing music, the structure of each piece is a very important factor.

Improvisation is terribly haphazard.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people - they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

Today each composer is not only involved in aesthetics, but he's actually trying to create his own language.

Of all the arts, music is really the most abstract.

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

I distrust anything that you don't hear.

It doesn't necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

By the visual pattern, but mostly I'm guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

Hopefully, I have a certain amount of what you call musical talent.

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

Didn't anyone tell you that size doesn't matter?""Yes, but I told him to put his pants back on and go home.

You can only kill disappointment with a new try.

Wives live longer than husbands because they're not married to women.

God, give me a deep humility, a well-guided zeal, a burning love and a single eye, and then let men or devils do their worst!

I hope that people don't need to look at the liner notes to be affected by the music.

Don't cling to anything and don't reject anything.

Loving, hating, having expectations: all these are attachments. Attachment prevents the growth of one's true being.

The misgovernment of the American people is misgovernment by the American people.

Dream big and surround yourself with brilliance, even if you end up dressed up like a flower or a sexually transmitted disease.

If a reporter doesn't like the person he's writing about, it shows up in his article.