The first question I ask myself when something doesn’t seem to be beautiful is why do I think it’s not beautiful. And very shortly you discover that there is no reason.

Most modern stuff I hear kinda sucks, someone should turn me onto something good, fast!

My dad’s probably one of the kindest people in the world. When I was younger that’s not how I was- I was a little spoiled brat.

I couldn’t get out of town fast enough, to go and hide. I went down to Delmar, north of San Diego, and pretty well did nothing for a year, just hibernated.

Besides merely some pleasure that we get out of the combinations of pitches together and lines, I think that there is some satisfaction that we get in the fact of having this diffuse thing organized...

The difference between the student and the born composer is he really hears the thing, and they have to stage it and manipulate it by technical equipment.

Being dubbed as a hunk sort of annoys me. It gives me a yucky feeling.

If listeners aren’t carried away to Heaven,I’m failing.

I am on sabbatical as of right now, been too busy to think of about my OWN needs as of late.

You write it down because finally, when it’s written down you do get it out of your system somewhat.

Meryl Streep does things I would never have thought possible… Her presence on screen is outstanding.

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

It doesn’t matter how far I may have carried some of the things, but I always pull back at the point where it ceases any longer to really be music.

My career should adapt to me. Fame is like a VIP pass wherever you want to go.

I recorded the song live in front of an orchestra, and yes, I was very moved, I was in tears.

But in the end, music is ultimately an aural art, pure and simple.

There are some people, by the way, that associate a certain amount of visualization with the performance of music. Those are people that really are not centrally concerned only with music, the traditional things.

Portraying emotionally ill characters gives me the chance to really act.

At times I might play some kind of folkloric flute, although I didn’t play those with the frequency or the skill then as I do now.

I think there have been some periods when the writing almost became a bit of a burden.

To believe in love, to be ready to give up anything for it, to be willing to risk your life for it, is the ultimate tragedy.

The new limitations are the human ones of perception.

We go on multiplying our conveniences only to multiply our cares. We increase our possessions only to the enlargement of our anxieties.

When we separate music from life we get art.

Next time we need to be on drugs and have lots of suffering and alcohol abuse going on while recording, I’m kinda picturing a Jerry Lee Lewis session from the mid Seventies.

I get a friend to travel with me… I need somebody to bring me back to who I am. It’s hard to be alone.

I started playing piano with a little band in high school. I was terrible. I thought I had absolutely no talent. I couldn’t keep time. I only got into McGill, which was a lousy music...

By the visual pattern, but mostly I’m guided entirely by my ear, what I hear.

There is a paradox because I think you’ve struck a chord there that we ought to simply pursue – it is true that music is a form of communication.

I’ve managed to keep a clear head and remain sane in this business because I remain a kid off-camera.

When he was reading, I would submerge myself into whatever it was he was reading, and I tried to anticipate what would happen next.

I can write music but I’m not much for words.

I prefer ordinary girls – you know, college students, waitresses, that sort of thing. Most of the girls I go out with are just good friends. Just because I go out to the cinema with...

It’s hard to say how you get influenced by something. When you work on something for seven years, it’s bound to make an impression.

All real freedom springs from necessity, for it can be gained only through the exercise of the individual will, and that will can be roused to energetic action only by the force of necessity acting...

We carry our homes within us which enables us to fly.

It doesn’t necessarily mean at all that the composer plays his own works best.

School, I never truly got the knack of. I could never focus on things I didn’t want to learn.

I was blown away by the standing ovation. I’ve had tributes before, sure, but I don’t retain that feeling, and I wasn’t prepared for it on Tuesday. But maybe you shouldn’t retain these things or...

By the way, the point between rationality and what we would call the irrational is a very difficult point to establish. There’s no specific line, as you know.

To the person that deals in visualizations, I suppose there is something rather exciting about a whole set of people – they all going symmetrically, up or down, in a military sort of precision.

I couldn’t deal with playing a character who rides motorcycles and has a leather jacket and is a tough kid, y’know?

If something is boring after two minutes, try it for four. If still boring, then eight. Then sixteen. Then thirty-two. Eventually one discovers that it is not boring at all.

I’m interested in producing a work of art, and unless I hear the thing thoroughly, I would have no reason to put it down at all.

It’s easy to fall into the trap of believing all the hype that’s written about you… Who knows? In a couple of years, you might find me in the loony bin!

I thought if I could get television interested in opera, it would make a kind of new thing that would allow composers to build a whole new repertoire.

Do not seek for information of which you cannot make use.

I have nothing to say, I am saying it, and that is poetry.

Ummm, reach for the stars and keeps your hands on the ground? Something like that? I guess you would end up with your arse in the air.

If you can do what you do best and be happy, you’re further along in life than most people.