You don't underestimate either players or audience in any circumstances.

An audience shouldn't listen with complacency.

If you don't get feedback from your performers and your audience, you're going to be working in a vacuum.

The establishment in Britain is certainly against the arts and against education. If something doesn't make a profit, it's invalid, and art doesn't make a profit in that sense.

If you aim at anything lower that is expecting your audience to be really alert and aware, then you're going to be caught out sooner or later as a composer.

At the moment, in Britain we're facing such enormous cutbacks in education programs and music programs and art programs that you feel you are knocking your head against a brick wall.

Recently I've been participating in radio and television talk programs doing broadcasts and conferences, and shooting my mouth off and really going to town.

I recently did a piece for the Boston Pops and John Williams, and I hope that it's as well a composed piece as I've ever done for any other medium or occasion.

You can't pander to your audience. You might in the short term, but ultimately you can't hoodwink them, either.

I know what I want at least, and the older I get I think I'm better at getting it out of players and singers.

I'm not actually teaching any more, but I am writing pieces for schools all the time, and for kids.

There is a paradox in pride: it makes some men ridiculous but prevents others from becoming so.

Oh, it is wonderful to know that our Heavenly Father loves us - even with all our flaws! His love is such that even should we give up on ourselves, He never will.

I often make the mistake of thinking that something that is obvious to me is obvious to everyone else.

I think all presidents should take the long view of history.

Originally, ethics has no existence apart from religion, which holds it in solution.

I own the night...the heat's my receipt.

Conceit is incompatible with understanding.

When you get to practice against the best, it brings the best out of you.

No art ever survived censorship; no art ever will.

You know, we should have cards like the deaf have. "Can't talk, I'm writing today."