The profound meaning of music's essential aim... is to produce a communion, a union of man with his fellow man with the Supreme Being

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.

people don't get meit's more rule than exceptionGod bless exceptions

In time of macromental change, only the adaptable survive.

The greatest motivation in life is the one that's deeply rooted in one's passion.

All of world's eyes are trained on the Games. So winning at that stage is heroic. It is a different feeling altogether and cannot be explained in words.

The main thing about the novel that is totally fascinating: It's not possessed by the writer; it's possessed by the reader.

Anyone who is gossiping is just insecure about that person they're gossiping about.

Generous gestures yield the most when that isn't their purpose.

I like the tradition of ordinary men in extraordinary circumstances and how they react to events which force them to be heroic in a way that is not in their natures.

My uncle used to love me, but she died.

He is a king who fears nothing, he is a king who desires nothing!