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.

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.

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.

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

Still, I never heard him say that he hated or wanted to hurt or kill someone for all the horrific things that had been happening to him and his family.

Your tongue holds your fate, and your fingers drive you to it.

All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions.

Canoe + waterfall = I don't go camping anymore.

The same fact that Boccaccio offers in support of religion might be adduced in behalf of a republic: "It exists in spite of its ministers.

I like beautiful clothing. I love Bergdorfs.

The contemporary quarrel over church and state is not really about whether a wall of separation of church and state should exist or not... The real question is what does 'separation' mean?

There's already been black presidents who've been corrupt, so it doesn't strike me that having a black man in office means he's going to be the Messiah.

Such a bad mistake it would be, to embark on marriage and adult life without a nice supply of duct tape.

I always learn something from every actor I've ever worked with. I always pick something from them.