None can sense more deeply than you artists, ingenious creators of beauty that you are, something of the pathos with which God at the dawn of creation looked upon the work of his hands.

Look for the little loves. Find and shape the little bitternesses.

Poetry is the silence and speech between a wet struggling root of a flower and a sunlit blossom of that flower.

As far as the Jews were concerned, Hitler's only 'prayer' was that they be wiped off the face of the earth.

I think that one of the things that influences me most as a composer is to what extent I can deconstruct and reconstruct the material that I'm working with.

I am working on three things: on being a prayerful person; on staying close to the handicapped; and on my writing. These are my constant concerns.

We are perpetually moralists, but we are geometricians only by chance. Our intercourse with intellectual nature is necessary; our speculations upon matter are voluntary, and at leisure.

It was always late at night, when everything and everyone else was quiet, that those voices would rise like ghosts, soft and haunting, filling your mind until sleep finally came.

When I'm writing a record, I kind of don't listen to much music. Just because I want to be inspired solely on the emotion; just based on how it feels.

When you make people feel important, you're going to be ahead of the game.