The faculty of creating is never given to us all by itself. It always goes hand in hand with the gift of observation.

I have learned throughout my life as a composer chiefly through my mistakes and pursuits of false assumptions, not by my exposure to founts of wisdom and knowledge.

I haven't understood a bar of music in my life, but I have felt it.

One has a nose. The nose scents and it chooses. An artist is simply a kind of pig snouting truffles.

My God, so much I like to drink Scotch that sometimes I think my name is Igor Stra-whiskey.

Art is the opposite of chaos. Art is organized chaos.

Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?

Film music should have the same relationship to the film drama that somebody's piano playing in my living room has on the book I am reading.

A good composer does not imitate; he steals.

In order to create there must be a dynamic force, and what force is more potent than love?

I take no pride in my artistic talents; they are God-given and I see absolutely no reason to become puffed up over something that one has received.

Night is a time of rigor, but also of mercy. There are truths which one can see only when it’s dark

Dad they think she has Down Syndrome." He smiled genuinely as his eyes welled up with tears. "That's okay. We love her.

All good, clean stories are melodrama, it's just the set of devices that determines how you show or hide it.

That we do not comprehend or accept something does not invalidate its truth.

We become obsessed with 'truth' when discussing statements, just as we become obsessed with 'freedom' when discussing conduct...Like freedom, truth is a bare minimum or an illusory ideal.

The writer's life [is] full of frailty and defeat like any other life. What counts is the work. Yet the work can quite easily be buried, or half-buried, by the life.

A lot of actors get concerned about their own image, even going so far as to rewrite a movie to best serve that image. All I want to do is be in good movies.

Water symbolizes the whole of potentiality - the source of all possible existence.

The future is best decided by ballots, not bullets.

What I like is natural music. It's like I was born with a gift to do something naturally, which I have no choice but to followup on.