Why is it that whenever I hear a piece of music I don't like, it's always by Villa Lobos?

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.

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.

Harpists spend 90 percent of their lives tuning their harps and 10 percent playing out of tune.

I have not done enough for effect." Horace Greeley

Forests were the first temples of God and in forests men grasped their first idea of architecture.

A library — a place full of books! Imagine!" Ivy couldn't imagine a place closer to heaven. Think of all the books you could read!

Hope, in general, is dangerous. Hope can be the loose thread that pulls apart your sanity.

How you see the world is a reflection of what is within you.

I've seen them on television on a Sunday morning most days of the week.

Man must suffer to be wise.

I believe we need a more opportunistic and democratic approach to lunar exploration, now that we're shifting from U.S. government-sponsored space exploration to private expeditions.

If you watch a movie, it never happens that you see a character that is in every single scene.

Come out into the Universe of Light. Everything in the Universe is Yours, stretch out your arms and Embrace it with Love