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

Art is not only about angst.

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.

I always conceive a piece as a different set of challenges.

Manifesting is a lot like making a cake. The things needed are supplied by you, the mixing is done by your mind and the baking is done in the oven of the universe.

When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. It is that awareness that says "I AM

Man's many desires are like the small metal coins he carries about in his pocket. The more he has the more they weight him down.

I'm a very loyal boyfriend. I'm a bit of a joker... I can be romantic, but not too sickly.

Hell has been described as a pocket edition of Chicago.

Neckties satisfy modern man's desire to dress in art.

He never leaves my side. And I know he never will.

...also took for granted that secret services were the only real measure of a nations political health, the only real expression of its subconscious.

You're never rude,' she said, smiling, 'and I think it's good to be touchy sometimes. It means you care.

No man has greater confidence than I have in the spirit of the people, to a rational extent. Whatever they can, they will.