The trick is to compose what one wants to compose and to get it commissioned afterward.

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.

External beauty is what the world sees in you but success comes to you because of your internal beauty.

I wanted to be JUSTICE, LOVE, and the WRATH OF GOD all in one.

The reality is that doing good unto others actually does more good for you.

'F.A.S.B' ... 'Financial Accounts Still Bogus'.

If I wanted to be a pop singer, I would have done that 20 years ago. I love country music.

I'm 36 years old, and I'm growing up. Little by little.

I carry my unwritten poems in cipher on my face!

The secret to dancing is that it is about everything except dancing.

No man dies before his hour. The time you leave behind was no more yours, than that which was before your birth, and concerneth you no more.

Anyone who spends a significant amount of time with me finds me disagreeable.