The more constraints one imposes, the more one frees one's self. And the arbitrariness of the constraint serves only to obtain precision of execution.

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.

That's the fashion. Fast as the speed of light, they say. Ha! It's got no soul, sir, no heart.

Maybe the price of forgetting that even in America, even in New York City, when a man from back home is talking, you better listen closely. (Dark City Lights)

We are different because our brain is wired differently. This causes us to perceive the world in different ways and have different values and priorities. Not better or worse - different.

You know, the only place in America where the millionaires and billionaires are predominantly liberal is here in Hollywood.

The only way to cure an egotist from bragging is by surgery--amputation at the neck.

[Barack Obama] will touch you on the shoulder and, you know - in that big brother or father figure kind of way. And you really do feel sort of shepherded by him.

The Church must breathe with her two lungs!

Politics and football don't mix.

At first blush, it seems that the young people who were shot down in the parking lot at the base of Blanket Hill gave up their lives for a dream that died with them.

Decide what you want to do. Then decide to do it. Then do it.