It is strange how one feels drawn forward without knowing at first where one is going.

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation of fire.

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.

Beauty and fullness of tone can be achieved by having the whole orchestra play with high clarinets and a carefully selected number of piccolos.

You must renounce all superficiality, all convention, all vanity and delusion.

The point is not to take the world's opinion as a guiding star but to go one's way in life and working unerringly, neither depressed by failure nor seduced by applause.

What is best in music is not to be found in the notes.

A symphony must be like the world. It must contain everything.

But it's peculiar, as soon as I am in the midst of nature and by myself, everything that is base and trivial vanishes without trace. On such days nothing scares me; and this helps me again and again.

I am hitting my head against the walls, but the walls are giving way.

If you think you're boring your audience, go slower not faster.

Life is a journey- not only to see the world- to find yourself, your place in the world, and your happiness.

I don't have problems. I am a writer. I am the problem.

He cross-examined his very wine when he had nothing else at hand.

Every so often i'd wake up when his arms clenched around me, his embrace so tight i thought he'd cut off my circulation, holding me as if even in his sleep he was haunted by the fear of losing me.

That's something that Francis [Ford Coppola] would always say. I remember when I was doing Tetro, he said, "Stay innocent. I'm 69 years old, and I'm still innocent."

My own habit had always been to write about the things that ticked me off in a given day. If I kept a journal at all, I kept it to vent.

The very scary thing about religion, to me, is that people actually believe God is who they think He is.

If my peers had a significant impact on my music, my music would probably be a lot more popular.

Once you're done changing, you're done.

I wish the children could be taught early on that our thinking creates our experience.