Well, American composers are the best composers. At this time in the world, we are where the energy is. We are the most diverse, the most iconoclastic, the most maverick, and the most skillful.

When I first wrote for orchestra, I didn't realize, when you have 20 people playing a violin line, that is very different than one person playing that line.

Composers love to write for symphony orchestras because the symphony is the Rolls Royce of musical instruments.

I began like all composers, writing for small groups. Chamber groups.

I've always been a composer dependent on texts.

Those who amass wealth through wrong means not only become lesser humans in the course of amassing, but also essentially underscore that their next generations become even worse human beings.

Giving up is the only sure way to fail.

Beware of little expenses a small leak will sink a great ship.

I have no child to inherit my properties. You, the people, are my only family, and to make you happy is the reason I do politics.

Can the cannibal speak in the name of those he ate?

Every day your memory grows dimmer - it doesn't haunt me like it did before.

She never said, "No, don't buy that trash," or "Pick a real book." She knew they were all real books. This is how great a librarian she was. And how great a mom.

The feminist movement has not made it to the Gulf of Mexico. Never seen that movement.

I find it is happening in different ways to every industry in the world, and positioning yourself for that, and trying to get ahead of that, is a big conversation right now.

There is no such thing as a little country. The greatness of a people is no more determined by their numbers than the greatness of a man is by his height.