When I decided to go to a country that subsidized music, I went to the Soviet Union for two years.

Composers today get a TV script on Friday and have to record on Tuesday. It's just dreadful to impose on gifted talent and expect decent music under these conditions.

Fear is a problem with film music and films; people want to be conventional, and there's more commercialism today. If you are not daring in your art, you're bankrupt.

My best film composing experience was with Elia Kazan.

Being an old radical, I like films like Spartacus. I could relate to the hero.

I prefer to write music for family films. I like people.

Every wonderful quality "in" someone is waiting to be recognized in all of life's great symphony.

The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known

The art of surrender is the art of getting out of the way of your own growth.

Thou makest the man, O Sorrow!--yes, the whole man,--as the crucible gold.

There are men who would do anything, asleep, and I'm not sure what stops them when they wake. I do not know how they draw the line.

There is no greater wisdom than well to time the beginnings and onsets of things.

No mud can soil us but the mud we throw.

Homosexuality was invented by a straight world dealing with its own bisexuality.

The worst thing you can do as a performer is to judge your character in any way, positively or negatively.

False values begin with the worship of things.