To listen is an effort, and just to hear is no merit. A duck hears also.

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.

String theory is an attempt at a deeper description of nature by thinking of an elementary particle not as a little point but as a little loop of vibrating string.

There are a tremendous amount of environmental issues that are on the table.

A lot of times I did lose yards on a run, but it wasn't for lack of trying.

Life is movement. Once you stop moving, you're dead. Choose life.

Don't expect me to cry for the wrong reasons.

Make sure that when you agree with everything that's being said and when you feel passionate about your future, you take it into your hands. You do something.

And now I understand that truth casts a spell of its own, one I'm not sure of how to hold on to, though I'm desperate to try.

The mists remain of the false glory that erupts from history.

No man gains credit for his cowardly courtesies.

Life sweeps you up. Some people resist a lot. I probably haven't resisted very much.