The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music they should be taught to love it instead.

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.

Life is never just in your own hands ...

I wouldn't trade places with anybody in the world. I love what I do.

When people call me a role model it puts the fear of god into me, because I feel like I'm destined to fail.

Reason deceives us; conscience, never.

As humans we like to laugh at our fears, we like to whistle in the dark.

My biggest struggles have been my biggest teachers.

I'm really into Sweet 75 right now, and I dig playing Nirvana, don't get me wrong. Even if Kurt never died, more than likely I'd be in Sweet 75 today still.

I am certain that movement never lies. There is only one law of posture I have been able to discover - the perpendicular line connecting heaven and earth.

When in doubt, do without.

Where there's fear, there is power.