When we use terms we get confused, yet we have no other way.

Shiva danced the world into existence... that's a very nice thought.

The blues are like the fugue in 18th century. It's probably the music that belongs most to our time.

Music remains the most strange of the materials because we don't understand what happens when music moves you.

Music is a performance and needs the audience.

I'm outside the music I've made. I have no interest in it.

I remain a humanist. We are a very curious race.

Poetry is fascinating. As soon as it begins the poetry has changed the thing into something extra, and somehow prose can go over into poetry.

I've seldom become nostalgic or settled.

The Greek sculptor - I don't think he was very different from any of us.

I think we're all pretty odd.

So, the darkness hid the little girl in herself, to protect her from the wolves with the human mask on their faces.

Change can only work in two ways – for the better, or for the worst. Yet, regardless of whatever manner in which change comes into our lives, what matters is how we view it and how we react to it.

Death was a friend, and sleep was Death's brother.

The real metric of success isn't the size of your bank account. It's the number of lives in whom you might be able to make a positive difference.

Try to get your characters into interesting trouble. Allow your characters to misbehave. Let them stay out after 11.

Eroticism is assenting to life even in death.

I think that there are these two very different sides to my relation to the Bible: one, my professional life; the other, a more private concern, interest and fascination with the Bible.

You can only analyze the data you have. Be strategic about what to gather and how to store it

The subject comes first, the medium second.

Once a bureau is created, its staff becomes a tenacious political interest group, well placed to defend its budget and to make a case for expanding its activities.